Prumm tough in body and tougher in mind

Katherine Prumm is a tough woman but even she was scared when she couldn't move her legs after a horror motorbike crash. Otago Daily Times motorsport writer Catherine Pattison catches up with the motocross star.

Sitting on Katherine Prumm's dresser is a huge peanut butter jar that houses some serious hardware - all the metal rods and screws that held her together when her racing world fell apart.

Prumm (21) redefines tough and provides a copybook case of moving on after a career as a world-class motocross rider was crushed.

Her story was regularly peppered with triumphs until a terrible training accident near her Auckland home in November 2008.

She fractured her back in three places, causing severe instability in the spine.

For a full minute, Prumm could not move her legs.

It was the "scariest thing" and worst pain she had experienced.

Surgeons inserted a train track of rods, hooks and screws to fuse her spine and placed her in a custom-made body cast.

So began the end of life as she knew it.

Like every elite athlete, she lived and breathed her sport - training, travelling, racing, winning - and all that evaporated in a split second.

Recollections of the crash do not hound her.

Prumm is supremely grateful for the use of her legs and adopts the mentality that you only get one shot at life and should make the most of it.

"I think that in life things generally happen for a reason.

"I try to look for the positives and with all that I have been through now I feel like I am a stronger person."

She is able to reflect proudly on how she pinned women's motocross firmly on New Zealand's sporting map, while still a teenager.

"I achieved the highest goals that I set out to achieve and did it twice [winning the women's motocross world cup in 2006 and 2007] before I was 20."

A year to the day after her crash she underwent surgery to remove the staggering array of spinal metal, but don't think she had been sitting around feeling sorry for herself in between operations.

Turning to learning mitigated the huge blow that she might never ride a motorbike again.

Prumm threw herself into studying at the Waikato Institute of Technology in Hamilton, starting a three-year bachelor's degree in sport and exercise science.

Displaying characteristic vigour to achieve superlative standards, she finished top of her first-year class.

Her studies have brought knowledge that she wished she had earlier.

"Mostly it has just been about different training methods and the way to structure training programmes, with different intensities, duration and exercise types.

"I also always thought that rest was for the weak, but it is one of the most important parts of training and allows your body to recover and get stronger and fitter."

Prumm's body has had a hammering.

Her accident topped off four "really bad" injuries that year.

As she says, that is the nature of motocross - "something that you accept as part of the territory".

"You can't really be a cry-baby in this game.

"You are very likely to get hurt and you have to be tough.

"I've always had a high pain threshold."

That doorway to agony has been wide open these past three months.

"I had initially thought the [second, six-hour] operation would be a really quick in-and-out job and that I would be back to full speed in a few days.

"It was not the case, though, as the weight distribution through the spine changed a lot after the rods were taken out and I had a lot of lower back pain as the weak muscles struggled to hold me upright."

Prumm says she hit the two-week post-op mark and was "in agony all the time".

Her muscles and nerves had been cut through, dashing plans of leaping back on to the cross-country mountainbike that kept her sane last year.

She has had only one ride on it since November and none at all on her former daily Yamaha companion.

"My back is in no way ready for the high impact of racing, so I have not been given a green light to get back on the bike yet."

She has no prognosis, either, about whether she can compete again.

Frequent consultations with her surgeon centre on checking that the curvature of her spine has not collapsed since the rods were removed.

"The most important thing is to get the strength and stability back into my spine and be pain-free, so that when I am 60 my back is able to hold me up."

Cycling has become her new-found infatuation and she is channelling her "sports-mad" personality towards moving on from gym instructing to starting a personal training course later in the year.

Adding RPM cycle-class instructor to her blossoming CV is also a goal.

Despite her determination to carve out a new career, Prumm insists she wasn't always a poster girl for positivity and says she is not "the most patient of people" when it comes to holding back.

"In the first few months after the accident it was really hard to adjust but I have learnt a lot about the other things that life has to offer."

Support from her family, boyfriend (New Zealand rower Graham Oberlin-Brown), coach, sponsors and friends helped her through black times during the past 14 months.

The New Zealand Academy of Sport and Sparc have also pitched in to help with her rehabilitation and pursuing her studies.

A companion she is reluctant to have is pain relief medication.

She is dogged by pain in these still-early recovery days.

Her spine will never be as strong as it was but her attitude is rock-solid.

"I am extremely grateful that I can still use my legs, so I try to do as many new activities as I can and enjoy all that life has to offer."

Katherine Prumm
Motocross queen

2007: World Cup winner, Australian champion.
2006: World Cup winner.
2005: World Cup runner-up, Oceania champion, Australian champion.
- Four-time senior and three-time junior New Zealand women's motocross title-holder.