AUTONEWS
Racer Nathalie McGloin (UK) has been breaking barriers and reaching milestone after milestone for years. She is a rugby player, chairman of the FIA Disability and Accessibility Commission and the only woman with a disability to hold a racing and rally license in the UK.
Not that McGloin needs an official certificate to prove she's out of this world, but just in case, she's just been officially recognized by the Guinness Book of Records (GWR) for being the first quadriplegic pilot in history and the only one in the world today.
In 1999 Nathalie McGloin was the victim of a brutal traffic accident as I was driving home from high school. He was in the passenger seat, because at that time he was barely 16 years old.
She broke her neck, but beyond that, the catastrophic consequences of the accident left her spine broken and she was paralyzed from the chest down, bedridden.
After 11 months in hospital, Nathalie had to get used to her new life. "After something like that, it's not until you come home and go out into the world that you learn your true skills," she said in an interview with GWR in London.
And while he knows he'll never fully recover from the consequences (physical or otherwise), he says "every day he learns something new." Although it wasn't easy for her, she didn't give up on being independent, got an adapted car and soon managed to enroll in university to be a lawyer.
There he became a rugby fan not knowing it would drastically change her life again. She trained and played an average of four to five times a week and was preparing to be Paralympics, but a new injury ruled her out in 2012 for nine months.
Back then, “the ambition to be a lawyer was replaced by the ambition to be self-reliant and strong,” she says.
One day, one of McGloin's rugby friends told her that she was sure her car was faster. She took the glove and the two went to a circuit to see who would win the bet. Although Nathalie acknowledges that she lost, she would never come back.
“I had this idea that I wanted to do this, and no one was going to stop me.” Said and done, because in 2015 Nathalie became the first quadriplegic driver to obtain a racing licence, and that was just the beginning.
He wasted no time before competing in his first race, as his track debut took place at the Brands Hatch Circuit in Kent (UK) that same year: “My license arrived on Thursday and I went racing on Sunday”, he recalls. .
Since then, he has been racing an adapted, hand-controlled Porsche Cayman S in three different British championships.
Despite the fact that, as she explains in the interview, her fingers “do not work properly” and she suffers from limited triceps function, she has also participated in the Porsche Club Championship and the Classic Sports Car Club.
In the 2018 season she got her first race win (Silverstone) and in 2019 she won her first silver in a championship. That year, she also entered the exciting world of rallying alongside her husband (and sometimes co-driver), Andrew, who is also an experienced driver. Since then she has not stopped reaping hits.
Nathalie McGloin is an inspiration and example of resilience both on the track and off, as she has for years combined her profession with her skills as an inspirational speaker for others with disabilities in the world of motorsport.
In fact, she for more than four years Chairman of the FIA Disability and Accessibility Commission that she started her journey in 2017, after the unfortunate accident that seriously injured promising British Formula 4 driver Billy Monger.
“When we're on the track, we're just like everyone else, and that's not just great, it's the beauty of the sport for me and many other disabled riders”...Says Nathalie
Whether behind the wheel of a supercar or on stage, Nathalie is the best example that, in motorsport, neither gender nor disability represent insurmountable barriers. We can't wait to find out which record he'll break next.
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