Blesma News
Latest news from Blesma, The Limbless Veterans
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Owen picks up pace for Paralympic dream
14 February 2018
Owen Pick’s Paralympic dream is carving ever closer into view as the former Royal Anglian closes in on bringing home a medal. The 25-year-old, who only took up snowboarding five years ago, will lead the British charge for glory in the boardercross and banked slalom disciplines at the Winter Paralympics, competing in the 2018 Games in South Korea on 12 and 16 March. “To go to the Paralympics having jumped on a board for the first time five years ago in a country where there’s no snow is just wow!” Says Owen. Blesma-sponsored Owen, who had a below-knee amputation of his right le
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Row2Recovery complete record breaking row across the Atlantic in aid of Blesma
21 January 2018
An amputee war veteran has just set the record time for rowing across the Atlantic in what is branded the world’s toughest endurance race. Former Para Jordan Beecher and Captain Jon Armstrong became the fastest pair to complete the gruelling crossing as they powered their seven-metre-long boat to the finish line in just 37 days, beating the previous record by around three days. The pair, who first met in the back of a Land Rover as new recruit Paras on a military exercise on Salisbury Plain, braved mountainous seas and 40C temperatures on the 3,00
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Row2Recovery "Team Trident" get ready to launch
7 December 2017
When you’re tucking into your Christmas dinner spare a thought for Jordan Beecher and Jon Armstrong. They’ll be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, rowing non-stop.A friendship that was forged years ago during a freezing military exercise on Salisbury Plain has led two former teenage Paratroopers to take on a daunting 3,000-mile row across the Atlantic Ocean. A decade after that meeting, Jordan Beecher and Jon Armstrong are about to plunge their oars into an epic challenge that will see them brave fearsome seas for more than 40 days. Jon now a Captain in the
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Land Army veteran is finally recognised
29 November 2017
Elizabeth Bartlett has told how she lost her leg on the first day working as a Women's Land Army volunteer and had to wait almost 75 years for compensation. Now 97, Elizabeth was just 21 when she gave up her job in a Sheffield steelworks to join the war effort in October 1941. She was sent to a farm 220 miles away in Kent, but fell into a threshing machine on her first day, suffering a devastating injury. I had worked on the machine in the morning but when I went to stand on it in the afternoon, someone had moved a board and I fell into the machine. My leg went in
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