Sophie Christiansen CBE is a British dressage rider who has competed in four successive Paralympic Games and is currently an eight-time Paralympic champion and has won multiple World and European titles. In 2016, following her success at the Rio Paralympics, she placed fifth in the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year the highest placed female and Para athlete.
Sophie was born two months prematurely with Cerebral Palsy and suffered from other health problems including jaundice, blood poisoning, a heart attack and a collapsed lung. Aged 6, she started riding for physiotherapy at the local Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) group.
She first competed at the Paralympics aged 16 and was the youngest athlete for Great Britain at the Athens Paralympics in 2004, coming away with an unexpected bronze medal.
Not just an athlete, Sophie also graduated with a First Class Masters degree in mathematics from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2011 and now works as a software developer at investment bank, Goldman Sachs.
In this Q&A session, she will talk about how the Paralympic movement changed her life, what it takes to get (and stay) at the top, and how having a duel life gave her a unique platform to speak up about the realities of living with a disability in the UK.
Send in your questions for Sophie by emailing ellie@devilsporridge.org.uk
This event will be held via Zoom and a joining link will be sent on the day.
This event is happening as part of our Disability: Past and Present project.
Learn more about this and ‘The Health of the Munition Worker: A Disability History of the World Wars on the Solway Military Coast’ exhibition here >
