Track and field Paralympian Stef Reid will make her Dancing on Ice debut this weekend, along with her professional skating partner Andy Buchanan.
Ahead of her first performance, Reid had an “amazing” skating prosthetic leg made, which she couldn’t be more “grateful” for.
Speaking to press including RadioTimes.com, the 37-year-old said: “It’s been amazing. I’m so fortunate that my whole life I have had access and funds to get amazing prosthetic technologies.
“I have woken up every day and always felt like I could do anything I wanted to do because I had legs to do it. I have a walking leg, I have a running leg, I have a high-heeled leg and I have a skating leg. I know that’s not everyone’s scenario around the world, so I feel really grateful.”
She continued: “I remember calling Richard, my prosthetist who makes my running blades, and saying, ‘I’m going to be on Dancing on Ice. Will you make a skate leg?’ And he was like, ‘Yes. What does it need to do?’ I said, ‘I have no idea. I don’t skate. Are you in?’ He’s like, ‘Yes, I’m in’ and so we literally had eight weeks to come up with something.”
Although Reid admits the finished leg isn’t “perfect”, she believes it will give her the best chance in the competition, as she competes against the other Dancing on Ice 2022 contestants.
“Is it perfect? No, we didn’t have enough time. But it is the best we possibly could have come up with in that space of time,” she explained.
In terms of the technology behind it, she added: “It’s not high tech in the way that you would expect. We actually found we needed to have an immobile ankle so there’s no hydraulics and nothing on it moves. It is just one solid piece because at the end of the day, that was what gave me the confidence.
“I needed to know in order to balance, each time I stepped down it wasn’t going to move and I kind of knew what I was getting out of it. So the real genius in it is actually how basically a foot and ankle can move in a million different combinations of positions.”
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Dancing on Ice is on ITV on Sundays. To find out what’s on telly tonight, check out our TV Guide or visit our dedicated Entertainment hub.