Dancing on Ice 2022 continues tonight (January 23) with Paralympian Stef Reid taking to the ice with her pro skating partner Andy Buchanan.
Stef joins the remaining five DOI contestants who didn’t get to skate last weekend. And she has admitted that her biggest fear is “looking ridiculous”.
However, having people look at her is something Stef is more than used to.
She’s been disabled after losing part of her right leg in an accident at the age of 15.
Stef admitted: “There is no hiding it, it will always be there. You’re always going to be stared at, you are always going to stand out.
“I’m going to have my own challenges and that’s fine. It’s going to take me a while to figure something out, but I always figure it out.
“It gives other people permission to be like: ‘Oh well maybe I can as well.’
Dancing on Ice 2022: How did Stef Reid lose part of her leg?
Born in New Zealand, Stef moved to Toronto, Canada, as a child – and it was there that she suffered a boating accident at the age of 15.
Stef told Premier Christianity that she was at a friend’s house for the weekend and spent most of the weekend tubing off the back of a powerboat.
She said on the last day of their trip they decided to go out on the boat one last time.
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Stef said she fell off “as usual” and was waiting to get picked up by the boat but she “knew something wasn’t right”.
“I could just tell that the boat was coming at me way too fast. And I knew that the driver hadn’t seen me,” she said.
Stef suffered propeller lacerations in the accident and underwent lifesaving surgery.
This resulted in her right leg being amputated below the knee, and she now wears a prosthetic.
She continued: “It was really scary because we were in the middle of nowhere, and I knew there was a lot of blood loss. That was when the possibility of death crossed my mind.”
Stef said she found God in the ambulance and prayed for the very first time.
“I knew that if I had died, I was probably going to be one of those people where I said: ‘Hey, God, it’s me,’ and he would say: ‘I don’t know you.’ That was terrifying,” she said.
How will her disability affect her on Dancing on Ice?
Stef was a keen skater before her accident.
Ahead of Dancing on Ice, she told ITV: “In Canada everybody skates so they bought us skates.
“When I got fitted with my new artificial leg one of the first things that I wanted to do was to go back to a skating rink to see if I could skate around.
“The first lap I did I kept falling. When you have an artificial foot, you don’t have proprioception on that foot so you’re missing a lot of the input to your brain.
“The second thing was it changed the centre of balance on that foot. I kept falling backwards because my centre of balance had shifted forwards. All it took was two laps of falling and then I was fine,” she said.
Stef explained: “I could skate a lap because your brain will adjust and you’ll figure it out. You just have to push through that really awkward part.
“I didn’t really skate much after that. It was just a case of yes I can still do this,” she admitted.
Stef now admits that after an “insane five years” and with the Paralympic cycle over, she’s keen to “dive into” rediscovering her love of skating.
“I was going to take a bit of time off from athletics anyway so this couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I’m so ready to dive into it,” she said.
What is Stef famous for?
Stef is a track and field Paralympian.
She competes for Team GB in the long jump and sprint events.
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Stef has been awarded a number of medals in her time, including an MBE from the Queen.
Her athletics honours include winning bronze in the 200m in the 2008 Summer Paralympics and silver in the long jump in 2012.
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Is Stef married?
She is indeed, and we’re sure her other half will be Stef’s biggest cheerleader.
Stef married Canadian wheelchair racer Brent Lakatos 13 years ago.
The couple have lived together in London since 2012.
Brent is also disabled after a freak ice skating accident when he was just six years old.
The accident resulted in the formation of a blood clot on his spine that left both his legs paralysed.
Dancing on Ice continues tonight (January 23) on ITV at 6.30pm.
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