KAREN Darke will travel to Rio for the Paralympics, which begin on Wednesday, with one thing, and one thing only on her mind; a gold medal.

After winning silver in the road time trial H1-2 at London 2012, the 45-year-old has her sights firmly set on upgrading that medal.

However, just a few months ago, Darke feared that she may not even be on the plane to Brazil, never mind targeting gold. A pelvic abscess derailed her plans completely, leaving her lacking energy and unable to power her hand-bike and there were times, she admits, that she feared her Olympic dream was over.

“I felt like I had really bad flu but I couldn’t work out what was wrong,” she says.

“I went to Spain at the end of last year for a training camp but then I began to feel even worse so I went to hospital over there. It turned out that I had a 20cm abscess inside me that was full of infection.

“I was in a pretty bad way all of last November and December, I couldn’t produce any power on the bike and I thought ‘that’s it, my dream is over, I won’t make it to Rio’.”

But Darke persevered with her recovery and regained her fitness, winning time trial silver and road race bronze at the UCI Para-Cycling World Cup in Ostend, Belgium in May, putting her back on track for Olympic success.

That she was able to overcome this setback is no surprise when you consider Darke’s history.

Born in Halifax in West Yorkshire, she has lived in Inverness for almost all of her adult life but she has not always been a cycling enthusiast. In her teenage years, her real passion was climbing and in the early 1990s, she climbed Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, as well as winning the Swiss Mountain Marathon in 1992.

However, in 1993, Darke’s life changed forever when a climbing accident left her paralysed from the chest down.

“I remember up until about five minutes before the accident and then I was unconscious for about three days afterwards,” she says.

“Obviously it didn’t feel great when I woke up and the doctors told me that I was paralysed but I was on so many drugs that it didn’t really sink in. The hardest time was about a month afterwards when I was moved out of intensive care in Aberdeen and down to the spinal injuries hospital in Yorkshire.

“I stopped taking as many of the drugs that I’d been on that had been getting me through the pain so I became a lot more with it and reality began to hit me.

“It was a tough time – it’s very hard to get your head around that you’re never going to walk again.”

While still in hospital, Darke watched the London Marathon and a seed was planted that this was something she could do.

“Watching that inspired me and I actually got a racing wheelchair before I got a normal wheelchair,” she says. “I’d always done outdoor sports and my friends did too so I kept on doing those things – it just meant that I had to find new ways of doing them.”

And find new ways, she did. In the years following her accident, Darke hand-cycled across Japan, kayaked the Alaska coastline and skied across Greenland.

It wasn’t until 2009 that Darke started racing on a hand-bike and the following year, she was invited to join the British Para-Cycling Team.

Being a part of one of the world’s most lauded performance programmes is, of course, a privilege but Darke admits that focusing solely on one specific discipline has, at times, been a challenge.

“Usually, I like variety and having different experiences in my life so part of the reason that I started cycling was that I thought it might be interesting to try and do one thing really well rather than a lot of things reasonably well,” she says.

“It’s been challenging, though, because sometimes I feel that it’s a bit too focused – now, I can’t just go off kayaking for a week because I would miss a load of training. So I miss some of the adventures but what’s great is being able to do something I love as my job.”

The opening ceremony of the Paralympics is looming but the Games have been beset by negative publicity including low ticket sales and budget cuts.

After the success of London 2012, it seems a shame that the movement has suffered this setback but Darke is doing what she can to keep the profile of para-sport high.

She has launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise money to televise her event in Rio and also to develop inclusive cycling opportunities for more people.

With cycling having enriched her own life so greatly, she wants to show the positive impact that the sport can have on everyone’s life, but particularly those with a disability.

For now though, Darke is focusing on securing the top spot of that podium in Rio. She knows that the competition will be strong but given the strength of character that she has shown to date, becoming Paralympic champion seems eminently achievable.

To support Karen’s crowd-funding campaign visit the website pledgesports.org/projects/stories-of-para-riders-in-rio/.