Paralympics host Ed Jackson: ‘It puts a smile on my face just to be able to walk down the stairs’

Ed Jackson is a former rugby player who co-presents the Paralympics in Paris. He was born in Bath in 1988 and went straight from school into a professional rugby union career – captaining England at Under-16 and Under-18 level, playing for Bath, London Welsh and Newport Gwent Dragons before suffering a catastrophic and almost fatal spinal cord injury in 2017.

After initially being told he might have no movement below the neck, Jackson has fought back to scale mountains, set up the charity M2M (Millimetres To Mountains) to help people people who’ve been through physical or psychological trauma, and present rugby and the Paralympics on Channel 4 – where he will be part of the team covering the Games from Paris. 

Ed Jackson is also the subject of new documentary film The Mountain Within Me, charting his recovery and his adventures in Snowdonia, the French Alps and the Himalayas after his life-altering accident. In his Letter to My Younger Self, Ed Jackson shares the wisdom he’s learnt along the unexpected journey his life has taken him on…

At 16, I was at Millfield boarding school. I’d been to school in Bath, where I was born, and ended up on a scholarship to Millfield as a swimmer. It took three weeks to realise they took swimming way too seriously for my liking. So I gave up swimming, much to the despair of my parents, but then started playing rugby more seriously. I was also a hip-hop fan, listening to Jay-Z, Eminem and Snoop Dogg, which is quite interesting for a white boy from the south-west of England.  

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I’d gone from being quite a big fish in a small pond at my previous school to being surrounded by people who were better than me at everything. It was daunting, but brilliant in terms of development, because you’re trying to catch up. The standard of coaching was unbelievable, the facilities are ridiculous, but you take it for granted at that age. In hindsight, I was so fortunate to go there. And because they give out scholarships, there’s a good mix of backgrounds. In my boarding house, my best mate was from Cardiff High School on a football scholarship, but there was also a prince. 

I would tell my younger self, as he was starting on his rugby career, to enjoy it more. When I was 16, I played for Somerset and then England under-16s and England had just won the 2003 World Cup, so my heroes were Jonny Wilkinson and Lawrence Dallaglio, who played the same position as me. Bath got in touch with the potential for a contract when I left school. It’s not the best thing to tell a 16-year-old – because the books went out of the window. I thought I would play sport for the rest of my life.

The first week after my accident [in 2017, after diving into the shallow end of a pool] was terrifying – I had no movement or sensation from the shoulders down. After a week, I was told that was it. My identity was completely wrapped up with being a rugby player and I certainly wasn’t that anymore. What does my life mean now? Who am I? I felt useless. People were having to do everything for me – I couldn’t even breathe for myself, never mind feed myself or go to the toilet. So there was a big ego hit. I was lucky to be contacted by other people who had been through similar situations. They were saying stay with it, whatever the outcome, time will help heal. At the time, you’re like, no way. My life’s over. But, of course, they were right.

After my accident, I had so much support. You form bonds pretty quickly in rugby because you are putting your body on the line every weekend and have to have trust in the person next to you. It brings people together very quickly and very tightly – and I feel so grateful for my rugby family.

Lois and I have been together since we were teenagers. I was 20 and Lois was 18, so I already had this rock in my life. We were engaged when I had the accident and due to get married less than a year after my accident. We called the venue, told them what happened, and said we’d have to cancel. When I started standing up in hospital, it became the next goal – to walk down the aisle for Lois. We got back in touch with the venue and they’d saved the date for us, just in case. So we got married on the day we’d planned and it was just incredible. Some of the doctors who’d effectively saved my life came to the wedding. 

One big thing we have learned is that honesty really is the best policy. There were stresses in our relationship because of the amount of change that happened. Lois was trying to protect my emotions because I was going through something huge, but also she was going through something really serious – she had to deal with the fact that her partner had changed quite a lot, especially physically. Getting everything out in the open rather than being angry behind closed doors or letting things build up has put us in a much stronger position as a couple.

I very much still live with a spinal cord injury and have a disability and all the fun stuff that goes along with that – especially underlying health things with the bladder and around sexual function. But I realise how lucky I am to be in this position, given how severe my injury was. The pendulum always swings. No matter how far in the negative you are, life will bring it back the other way at some point. That’s what I’d tell my younger self, because there was a lot of anxiety in those early days thinking about what this meant for the rest of my life.

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Now it puts a smile on my face just be able to walk down the stairs in the morning. There were so many things I had to contemplate never being able to do again. So I have a layer of gratitude I never had before – sometimes you have to lose stuff to really appreciate what you have. 

I learned to move my goals to the present day. Instead of thinking, am I going to walk again, I would think, can I move my third finger on my right hand a little bit more today? And if I achieved that, it would seem like a success. Then there’s progress and bit by bit, it would snowball. But, of course, I also did not know when the progress would stop. During the day when you’ve got a room full of people, it’s a great distraction. I was putting on a smiley brave face. But at night, when you’re left to your own thoughts, that’s when it gets really tough. 

I was in a spinal unit and there were some people who went three months without any visitors. So you really appreciate the support network around you. That was one of the main triggers for starting the starting Millimetres to Mountains (M2M). We take people who’ve been through physical or psychological trauma on adventures around the world but also enter them into a three-year programme where we fund life coaching and retraining therapy. It directly mirrors my own recovery.

Mountaineering has become a real passion. I set myself the challenge of climbing Snowdon a year after my accident to raise money for Restart, the charity that supported me. Standing on top of Snowdon was one of the first times I felt any sense of purpose after my accident. And it was from doing things for other people. There’s so much power in that. Until that point, my life had been all about doing stuff for me. The size and the majesty of these huge peaks makes you and your problems feel small. My next aim is an unclimbed 5,000m peak in Kyrgyzstan with a team of disabled adventurers. We would be the first ascent – so we would get to name the mountain. It’d be nice to have our own mountain for the disabled adventure community!

The new film focuses on a couple of the big challenges I took on but also the emotional side of going through trauma or acquiring a disability. There are things that impact on our day-to-day life that aren’t talked about enough – like sexual function, bladder problems. If you put a bunch of people with disabilities together, they’re not talking about how they can’t walk any more. They go straight to talking about bladders, how do you poo, what’s your sexual function like. If the film helps one person who might be struggling, then great. But there are lessons applicable to anyone.  

If I could have one last conversation with someone it would be with my best friend from school. His name was Tom Maynard, he was a professional cricketer, and he died when we were 23. I miss him to this day. We were thick as thieves. We got dumped in the same boarding house when we were 13 at Millfield, both a bit lost, and were best mates ever since. I learned a huge amount from him and we had a lot of fun together. I’d love to have more time with him.

I don’t fear failure any more. It can be very restrictive and stops us taking chances. I’ve learned how lucky we are to be alive and breathing in the first place. I know some people’s circumstances are easier than others, but we have got this life to live. So go on adventures, say yes to things.

I’d love to relive the moment I got my first England jersey. It’s very fond memory. My family are all football fans, and I was the first rugby player apart from granddad, who played for the army and is not with us any more. He came to my presentation, so it was an incredibly proud moment for him and obviously, really proud moment for me as well.

My younger self could never have imagined everything I’m doing now. I never looked beyond the next game of rugby. The fact I’ve written a book that became a Sunday Times bestseller would have shocked him. My English teacher wrote a beautiful letter to me when I was in hospital because he’d read my blogs, saying, “I never knew you were listening!” which was quite funny. But taking stock of everything that has happened since my accident, it did teach me a lesson that life doesn’t have to go to plan for it to go well.

Ed Jackson is one of the presenters of Channel 4’s Paris 2024 Paralympic Games coverage from 28 August to 8 September. A documentary about Ed Jackson, The Mountain Within Me, directed by Polly Steele, is in UK cinemas from 23 August, with preview Q&A screenings from 19 August.

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