Rise Above

After surviving a crippling car crash, Alwyn Uys turned tragedy into opportunity.

- Kieran Legg

HIS LEGS FELT COLD, his back was a firebrand of pain that exploded around his neck. He felt the man tap him on his shoulder, he tried to stand – but there was no movement, just a sinking dread, a panic that rose and fell with each struggled breath. And there, on the shoulder of that road, with the world plunging into twilight and his wrecked car lying next to him, he knew he was going to die.

“Sometimes I think this may have been the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” says Alwyn Uys, glancing to the wheelchair at his side. “It opened my eyes to who I was and what I was meant to accomplish.”

Back in 2014, Alwyn was on a comfortable trajectory. He’d spent his university years bolstering the ranks of Maties’ dominant rugby team, bringing speed, aggression and power to the pitch. But a self-proclaimed realist, he hadn’t ditched academics. After finishing his Bachelor of Commerce with a focus on Logistics, he moved into the family business. Meanwhile, he was subbed out of the scrum after suffering a brutal arm injury that made him shift his focus to competing in triathlons instead.

But here’s the bottom line: Alwyn was happy.

“Things were good,” he says. “I had a solid group friends, a supportive family – everything was going my way.”

However, subconsciously, the young sportsman had missed something. Outside of sport, he didn’t have his own identity, he admits. He had defined himself by what he could accomplish physically. If that were to disappear, did he even know who he was?

He received his answer while driving into PE in 2014. It was 7pm, he was alone, but stone cold sober. The only hitch? His arm was in a sling and his belt was unbuckled.