A professional free-runner and former Ninja Warrior contestant has spoken out after a horror motorcycle crash left him with life-changing injuries.

Mat Armitage, from Hoylake, had spent Sunday, July 15 riding around Wales when he came off his bike travelling to Porthmadog with friends.

The 27-year-old told the Globe: "The accident was all my fault. I had been out all day on my bike, I left the house and road to Bala, stopped there and then travelled to Betws-y-Coed had a coffee then on to Llangollen.

"There's a big biker cafe there so I met a few other guys and one of them had this bike I was looking to buy next. He said that he wanted to go to Porthmadog. I knew a lot of the routes and roads to there so I ended up taking them there.

"I was just riding around a corner, lent too far on the bike and it flew from under me.

"I smashed into a fence which, in turn, threw me into the road.

 

Mat's bike after the horror crash

"An off duty nurse stopped almost instantly after the accident but it took the ambulance around 90 minutes to reach me as it was coming from Wrexham.

"A first responder came within 30 minutes but couldn't do much to help relieve my pain so I was left lying on the tarmac for 90 minutes.

"For an hour I was told the ambulance was just ten minutes away but they gave me pain relief but decided that the air ambulance was needed - that arrived two and a half hours later.

"As I was a personal trainer, I had an idea about what my injuries were.

"At the time, my arm was the most painful - I knew I had dislocated my shoulder. I tried to lift my leg up, the top of my leg moved but the bottom half didn't.

"I knew then really that I had broke my fibula and tibia on both legs, broke my back and completely smashed my right ankle.

"They sorted me out with pain relief but gave me ketamine. My experience with that was honestly worse than the crash.

"While I was on the road I phoned my family and spoke to my sister's fiancé. Around four weeks before my accident he had crashed and broke his back in three places.

"I always speak to him about anything to do with bikes and they arrived on scene.

"The air ambulance were going to splint my legs but because of the ketamine I don't remember a lot from then on. I just remember being wheeled into the helicopter and taking me to a hospital in Rhyl but the doctors turned me away as they said my injuries were too severe.

"The air ambulance then took me to Stoke where I had 40 X-rays on my legs. I don't know whether it was the mixture of drugs that I was on but I felt like I was in another reality.

"I couldn't distinguish what was going on. I genuinely told myself I had died and I got so frustrated with myself for dying that way and leaving my family."

 

Mat then underwent surgery to have plates put on his legs, he says he always knew that he would have to amputate his foot.

"I knew from the start that i'd probably would need to take my foot off. The doctors wanted to save it but it would have meant breaking my leg every couple of weeks for two years to grow 10cm of bone.

"Even then, it could be even longer, who knows how long it could have taken to grow the bone.

"I did have the first operation to remove the entire ankle as it was that badly damaged. They then took a blood vessel and skin graft from my thigh.

"The amount of people I had spoken to who said that even after the two year procedure they had to amputate their foot, I just decided to save myself time and do it.

"A surgeon came to me after the skin graft operation and asked if I had made my decision, I told him that I wanted it off. "He said 'sooner or later?'

"I said sooner and then five hours later went into surgery to have it taken off.

"I had a rod inserted for my tibia on fourth week in hospital and to be honest the bad leg is going to take a lot longer to get back into fitness."

Mat is now out of hospital seven weeks on from the crash.

He added: "I'm now home and have been back for two weeks. I'm just waiting to hear about a prosthetic foot.

"The way I look at it is i'm upset when thinking back about what I would be able to do. I have to keep the blinkers on and look to the future.

"I need to set my sights high and I don't want to fade away.

"The goal for this year is to do a backflip on solid ground and get back on Ninja Warrior.

"Then eventually I may get into the paralympics

"Family seem to be happy they saw me at my worst - my mum and dad visited every day at hospital. My girlfriend has only just stopped having nightmares about it.

"I'm fine in myself, i've been asked about counselling but its my choice and I'm happy with that. I worry more about those around me.

"I go to Stoke once a week and have to go back to orthopaedics for the bone damage."

On November 2, a fundraising event will be held at The Quadrant in Hoylake to raise cash to help Mat pay for bills, living costs and hospital visits.

He will also be using the funds to go towards a high-tech prosthetic foot.

Anyone willing to donate a raffle prize for the event can email lollipop_laura10@hotmail.com

A GoFundMe page has also been set up to raise cash, to donate please visit https://www.gofundme.com/supporting-mat-armitage