PARALYMPIAN Mark Brown proudly flew the flag for East Lancashire when he competed in the championships in Athens. In the week he announced his retirement from major international competitions, JENNY SCOTT, met the country's most successful disabled runner to discuss his amazing life story. . .

MARK Brown was just four miles from home when the accident happened.

He had been visiting family in Burnley and was travelling by motorbike back to the army barracks in Shropshire, where he was stationed with the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, when he noticed a car approaching on the road ahead of him.

"There was a collision and that was it," he said.

Mark, who lives in Foulridge, was left partially paralysed, his left arm had to be amputated and he was discharged from the army on medical grounds.

He said: "I'd been living in the army's married quarters with my wife and baby daughter Claire. After the accident, I lost my home, job, friends and colleagues.

"It felt as if I had fallen into a black hole - and I was only 21."

How Mark wrenched himself out of depression and find his way to athletic glory, winning seven medals in major championships, is a story of great determination and endurance.

For the self-confessed "boisterous and cheeky" young man suddenly found himself laid up in a rehabilitation centre in London, feeling his life was in turmoil.

He said: "You feel you're in a whirlwind. I was desperate to find something positive in my life to focus on."

A miner's son from Duke Bar, Burnley, Mark, a pupil at Barden High School, had never been the academic type.

Instead, he channelled his boundless energy into sport. He said: "I was hyperactive. I used to run non-stop. I represented the school at cross country and played football. Even cricket was too placid for me."

After the accident, Mark was left with few qualifications and turned his back on sport of any kind for about five years.

"It was like a coping strategy," he explained. "After the accident, I shut out of my life all the things I used to enjoy.

"It was as if the person I was had died and I had to find myself again."

When Mark finally felt ready to go back to work, he was only offered administrative posts. He said, "You get pigeon-holed if you're disabled, so I decided to study business and commerce at college in Exeter."

It was a move which was to change his life. Friends there rekindled his interest in sport and since then, Mark has competed regularly at all the major championships.

He picked up bronze and silver at the World Championships in 1994 and 1998 in the 10,000m and marathon, won bronze in the marathon at the Atlanta Paralympics in 1996 and silver in the same event at Sydney in 2000. Last year Mark won gold in the 5,000m at the European Championships in Holland.

If he wanted to compete in what he knew would be his final games, Mark's only option was to run in the 5,000m. He ended up finishing a creditable fifth and set a personal best.

"It was a great race to be involved in," he said, from the home which he shares with wife, Janet.

Now 42, Mark has decided to bow out of major international competitions and wants to concentrate on working in schools with able-bodied and disabled youngsters.

"Children's perception of sport is that you have to win at all costs, rather than enjoying it," he said. "We need to change that and we need to give more disabled children a chance to enjoy sport - perhaps alongside able-bodied youngsters."