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Starting Again: Mark Colbourne MBE on Resilience, Discipline and the Long Road

Most of us tell our children that hard work pays off. Mark Colbourne MBE is proof of what that actually looks like, and how long it can take.

Mark represented Wales at volleyball in his twenties. Then, in 2009, a paragliding accident left him with a broken back and a future he had not planned for. He was almost forty when he sat on a racing bike for the first time. Three years later he stood on the podium at the London 2012 Paralympic Games with a gold medal, a silver medal and a world record, and was awarded an MBE for services to cycling.

In this episode, Mark talks to us about what it really takes to begin again, and why the habits that carried him through were formed long before the medals. We talk about discipline, and how the small daily routines children build at school quietly become the ones they lean on as adults. We talk about the value of sport alongside education rather than in competition with it, and about what parents can helpfully say to a child who is not yet the fastest, the brightest or the most obviously gifted in the room.

For any parent watching their child work hard and wondering whether it is landing, this is a conversation worth an hour of your time.

Don't dream it. Know it. Do it.

https://www.heatherharries.com