Injured speedway star Sam Norris back on bike eight months after crash nearly killed him
A teenage speedway star from Cambridgeshire who was left in a coma after a serious crash during a race has got back on his bike for the first time.
Sam Norris, from Linton, was just 15 when he was seriously injured during a British Youth Championships racein Glasgow in June last year.
The incident left him with brain-damage and he spent five days in a coma.
However, he's now made a remarkable recovery and recently posted a video on social media of him riding a bike on a grasstrack for the first time since the crash.
"I got ran over at 50mph by another rider which put me out cold, and I was brain-damaged from that," Sam told ITV News Anglia.
"I'm just trying to recover from it even now, and I've still got learning to do.
"Once you've done it (got back on the bike), you just remember it. Everything, luckily, came back to me. As soon as I sat on that bike, I could remember everything I used to do."
Before the crash, Sam was a rising star of the sport had competed for the Mildenhall Fen Tigers since the age of 14.
The severity of his brain injury meant he lost his sight for a month, and he had to learn how to walk and talk again.
Watch an extended interview with Sam
Since then, his condition has improved significantly though, and he's hoping to return to competitive racing in the near future.
"I think of myself as lucky to come back from such a bad injury. I can now set myself new goals and I kept on saying to myself when I was in hospital that in exactly eight months I will get back on a bike and to this day I have done that," he said.
"Keep on telling yourself things you want to give yourself so you can work as hard as possible to get to that. It just shows how much determination you have to have with an injury like this if you want to get back to a sport that you loved."
Click below to see more about Sam's remarkable recovery in a report by ITV News Anglia's Emily Knight