Finding his feet: how Paul Stewart proved doctors wrong and walked again

"It was a beautiful day. Clear blue skies. Lovely snow. I had a new snowboard," he says, recalling that day on the French Alps in December 2008.

"I was boarding on a powder field between two chairlifts. It wasn't steep and it had ski tracks on it (there had been children there earlier).
Then I looked up and saw this slab of snow coming towards me. I remember everything going black. It was like being inside a tumble dryer."

Paul's biggest worry was getting buried. "I was trying desperately to collect saliva in my mouth (to survive burial in an avalanche you are meant to spit: the saliva will go downwards, showing you which way to dig) but when I opened my eyes it wasn't black and I wasn't buried. I wasn't in any pain. I just couldn't feel my legs."

It was amazing Paul survived at all — without a scratch, as he puts it, just a broken back. He had plunged 200ft off a cliff at 100mph. Wearing a helmet no doubt saved his life. "That and a big puffy jacket. I missed rocks by inches."

In hospital French doctors told him he had broken his lower spine and would never walk again. Five days later he was transferred home where the same diagnosis was repeated: paralysed for life.

But Paul refused to accept it. He was initially treated at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, the leading NHS facility for spinal injuries, but eventually transferred to a private unit at the Royal Buckinghamshire, where he walked on crutches for the first time. He later had treatment at a special hospital in Miami.

Up until the accident, Stewart, 29, ran an events company. Last week, he launched internet venture Sportpost, a sports site for the YouTube generation. He is also heading a campaign for better NHS treatment for victims of spinal injuries.

His father Andy, 58, a self-made financier worth £80 million, has already pledged £250,000 to his son's charity. Stewart senior is a well-known character in the City who started out as a teaboy for a stockbroker when he was "asked to leave" school at the age of 17. He is also a racing enthusiast and owns 30 horses. Paul's brother Mark, 31, is a racing journalist.

His mother Judy, 55, is a housewife and the family are based between London and Brighton. Paul has recently settled in an apartment block in King's Road, in a complex where he uses the gym and swims at least five times a week to increase his strength.

What kept Paul's faith is that none of the doctors seemed to be able to say why he would not walk. One doctor at Stoke Mandeville said he had some power in the quadriceps muscle of his right thigh. If he could build this up, he might have a chance.

Paul has worked on this principle ever since: building up whatever muscles he can, never giving up hope. The special treatment in Miami included using an electrode device to measure the feedback between brain and muscles: the patient learns how to send more signals to strengthen the muscle.

But it's obvious that a lot of his recovery is down to his mental strength and resilience. "When it first happened, I was naive. I thought, this doesn't happen to me — I'll be all right. I never once thought, I'll never be able to do this or that. I just thought: I'll do physio. I'd ask doctors about whether I would walk again and they wouldn't answer.

"So I thought, right, I'll make up my own answers." He admits he was almost stupidly stubborn during his early recovery. "I was a nightmare. The best thing to do after an accident like that is to lie still but I believed from doing sport that you have to train the hardest to reach the end goal. So I expended a lot of useless energy in the first month, forcing my bed up five degrees every hour, until I got to 90 degrees.

"One of the doctors had to phone my dad to say, Your son must understand that the most important thing about being a patient is just that — being patient. If he doesn't stop he will do more harm than good.'"

Does he still truly believe he will walk again unaided? He can't feel anything from the knees down — not yet anyway, he adds: he doesn't rule out being able to feel something one day. Some doctors believe there is a recovery "window" for spinal injury victims: within a certain period of time, they will get as strong as they're ever going to be. Some say it's one-and-a-half years, others say five years.

Whatever the case, Paul does not believe he has time to waste. He has recently transferred from crutches to walking sticks, to build up the muscles in his arms. (His upper body strength is phenomenal, as you can tell from the T-shirt straining over his biceps). "You're not guaranteed a result But then they thought my hamstrings couldn't get strong and they have."
A special wheelchair for playing tennis is due to arrive next week. He wouldn't mind competing in the Paralympics — he's already done the swimming trials. And next year he wants to do the London Marathon on crutches.

"I used to beat myself up thinking I need to exercise 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Paul. "But then I realised that I need to have a life too."