Paralysed, depressed and directionless, Pat reached a fork in the road

PARIS: Australian para-archer Patrick French reflects on the darkest time of his life — the moment he became a paraplegic and the months of despair that followed — and makes a jarring observation.
“I was definitely depressed, but I didn’t have anxiety; it’s hard to have anxiety when you don’t care that much,” the 31-year-old, who’s about to make his Paralympic debut in Paris, tells Wide World of Sports.
“When I was stuck in hospital, I had days when I just didn’t want to be here. I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel and felt like I had to put a brave face on for my family; I didn’t want them to see me struggle. In the beginning it was heartbreaking.”
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But nine years after a falling tree changed French’s life in a major way, the archer from Kyneton, a country town about 85 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, ponders the course of his life and smiles on the inside.
“At the time it completely shattered my life to a million pieces, but in hindsight I probably wouldn’t change anything,” he says.
“I’ve got a beautiful little family that supports me 100 per cent … It’s probably been a blessing. My life is harder, but that’s just the way it is. My life wouldn’t be the way it is if I didn’t have the accident. There’s no point thinking ‘what if?’ if I’m happy with the way my life is.”
Patrick French is set to compete as an archer in Paris on his Paralympic debut. Paralympics Australia
Before French’s accident he was a concreter by trade, but would help an “old bloke”, as French describes him, on his farm on weekends.
He had cut down countless trees over many years, but on one life-changing occasion on the old bloke’s farm near Daylesford, a town about a 30-minute drive from Kyneton, he was chopping down a tree 33 metres high and the job at hand did not go to plan.
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The tree fell in a wrong direction, bounced off another tree, and cracked him in the head.
He acquired a brain injury and was left paralysed from the chest down.
He was 22.
His only memory of that fateful day is of driving to the farm in the morning.
“Complete amnesia,” French says.
French’s life changed in a major way when a tree fell on him in 2015, leaving him with a brain injury and paralysed from the chest down. Paralympics Australia
He spent the next two weeks in a coma, and has no memory of his first two weeks out of the coma.
Six dismal months in hospital followed the accident, and many wretched days beyond his discharge.
At some point along the bumpy road, he reached a fork.
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“I felt like I had a choice: be sad and miserable, and no one will want to be around me, or just get on with my life,” French says.
His fiancé Kristyn and his five-year-old son Colt are his world, as is his newly discovered obsession with archery.
He only took up the centuries-old sport in 2022, when he bought a bow to go hunting.
French taking aim in practice ahead of the Paris Games. Paralympics Australia
At the Esplanade des Invalides over the next couple of weeks, he will compete in the men’s individual compound and mixed team compound events.
“A lot of things wouldn’t have happened if my life had continued on the trajectory that it had,” French says.
“I was just a concreter, working, drinking beer every weekend … and now I’ve got a beautiful fiancé, we’ve got a five-year-old son and I’m about to compete at the Paralympics.
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“There still are times when it’s too much or too hard. I think it’s impossible to have an injury like this without being down in the dumps sometimes.
“I just try to see the good in life.”
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