After losing both legs, former lance corporal Corie Mapp turned to sport during recovery. Since then, he’s become world champion in para bobsleigh. As he releases his memoir ‘Black Ice’, read on to learn about his life in the military, sports career and future plans as a Police Constable.
Corie Mapp was born in the backwoods of eastern Barbados in 1978. After a troubled time in school, and without any qualifications, the future para bobsleigh world champion started his career in the Royal Barbados Police.
This was a dangerous and eventful period in Corie’s life. Following the death of his father in 2005, he left his island home to pursue his dream to serve in the Household Cavalry.
Four years later, after public duties in London and combat vehicle driver training, Mapp was deployed with the Household Cavalry Regiment to Afghanistan on Op Herrick XI.
On 31 January 2010, while under enemy fire, Corie’s Scimitar tank drove over an improvised explosive device (IED). In the resulting explosion, his vehicle was wrecked and he was blown twenty feet away from it.
When he was found, the apparently-grinning Corie had lost both legs below the knee, and had a badly damaged left hand. Corie’s grin arose not from his well-known sunny disposition, but because his face had been sliced open from ear-to-ear.
Corie had also sustained a large injury to his face, a broken jaw and a punctured lung.
Two weeks later, he regained consciousness in Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham. He was deeply traumatized and seriously ill, a situation complicated by an undiagnosed allergy to morphine.
But Corie was determined to regain his mobility. A mere month after his admission to Selly Oak, he was discharged into the care of the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) at Headley Court.
On his first full day there, he managed to walk a few steps unaided on his new prosthetic legs. But this was just the beginning of Corie’s remarkable recovery.
Over the next couple of years, Corie competed in sitting-volleyball at the Warrior Games and two Invictus Games. He was also the captain of the winning team in county championship disabled cricket, and learned to play golf.
Towards the end of his time at DMRC, Corie was introduced to bobsleigh. Whilst at a training camp in Canada, Corie found that he was a natural mono-bobsleigh pilot.
Since then Corie has won many medals and trophies, including the inaugural World Cup and the 2020 European Championship. Not content with these sporting achievements, in 2020 Corie joined Wiltshire Police as a full-time Police Community Support Officer.
He plans to become a Police Constable in 2022, while continuing to compete at the highest level in para bobsleigh.
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