Frederiksen follows in pal Adlington's footsteps with glorious Paralympic gold

Four years ago, Heather Frederiksen's goal for 2008 was to swim in Beijing in the same Olympic event in which her friend Becky Adlington won her second gold medal last month.

She made it to Beijing and on Wednesday she struck gold in world record time but such are the twists in life that it was as a disabled Paralympian that she achieved her ambition.

In 2004, Fredericksen, from the village of Billinge, near Wigan, stood on the podium at the ASA national championships in Adlington's 800 metres freestyle event and again at the world championships in open water, a event introduced to the Olympics last month.  At just 18, she was a swimmer going places.

That same year she suffered a terrible accident that is still so recent and so raw in her mind that she refuses even to explain it. It left her with little use in her right arm and right leg and, as she put it, 'only able to swim in circles'.

She had to give up her job as a carer, ironically for the adult disabled, and all hope of an Olympic future. Her hospital consultant doubted she would ever swim again, and for 18 months she didn't.

'I was gutted, obviously. It was a case of my life being over. I found it hard,' she said.

Then she bought a second-hand tumble dryer from a physically disabled man. They swopped a few thoughts, and he left her with a new mantra: 'Sit down and feel sorry, or get on. If you sit and feel sorry, you go down - and you don't get back up.'

About the same time she watched on television as former swimming friend and contemporary Joanne Jackson won gold at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

'I said to  to herself  'I'm not ready to finish. I'll finish when I want to finish'. And here we are.'

Which was at Beijing's Water Cube where Adlington won two golds and Jackson a bronze last month, and where last night a screaming full-house of 17,000 saw the Lancastrian wheel herself in her chair to the poolside before  breaking the world record for 100 metres backstroke she had set only hours earlier in the heats.

Almost three seconds behind her, thwarted in her bid to be 'a Paralympic Michael Phelps' by winning seven gold medals was American Jessica Long, a double gold medallist already. 'It can't get any better. It's awesome. It's why you put up with all the long hours and the pain and the tantrums,' said Fredericksen.

'Life was very difficult after the accident because you've got to come to terms with the fact that you have a disability that is affecting you and that your life has changed. I was told I would probably never swim again, and it was very, very hard to come back because you have to find a whole new body balance.'

In essence she had to learn to swim again while at the same time re-training for a new job teaching the disabled to drive.

'All the time in the pool you still compare yourself with the times you used to do. It's really hard to get out of that type of thinking.  But I'd say swimming has helped. All the anger that I had, I managed to get out of me in my training, and I've also been able to prove people wrong.'

As for the accident, she says: 'I'd rather not talk about it because that was then and this is now and I don't want to dampen my day by reliving all that. I want this day to be a high. This is me now and this is what I'm dealing with.'

She recalled watching on television as Adlington won her golds and Jackson won her bronze behind her. 'I swam with both girls and we've been out a few times and had a good laugh. I said to my coach, John Stout, 'I want one' and that really gave me the kick I needed.'

The final inspiration, though, came when she was watching the open water races, a new Olympic discipline in which she once won world and European medals.

'Most of all, Maarten van der Weijden who just beat David Davies because I know him really well and I know what he went through when he had leukaemia. People like that really inspire you,' she said.

In fifth place in the same race was Rachael Latham, 18, another from near Wigan and one of the Magnificent Seven whose progress to 2012 Sportsmail is following. 

'It's been amazing. Competing before a crowd like this is beyond anything I thought I'd ever experience. I improved my best by more than a second, so I can't fault myself.'