DANNY CRATES’ life changed when he heard a bang and his arm was on his lap.
And it rediverted him from a semi-pro rugby hopeful and engineer to a British Paralympics hero, TV star and business guru who swam with sharks.
The then-21-year-old from Essex was driving along the east coast of Australia on his final job in 1994 before heading back to Sydney to fly back home after a year Down Under.
But when he collided with a 76-year-old local farmer’s truck, the bulldozer blade sticking out the back of the vehicle ripped through Crates’ car and virtually severed his right arm off.
The car ended up 15 feet down an embankment and, thankfully, the one household within ear shot heard the crash and rushed to help.
Crates, 51, told the Stripping Off podcast: “I was with my boss. We don’t really know what happened.
“There was just the bang.
“There was an arm on my lap. I went into a bit of a panic. He said, ‘Don’t look down, it’s yours.’
“Pretty much [completely severed], tendons holding it together.
“So I climbed out of the passenger side of the car and took the arm with me. I took the arm with me, and then luckily there was one house on the road and they heard it.
“She pretty much just wrestled me to the floor and sat on top of me because I was running around like a headless chicken until the emergency services came.
“At the time. You don’t know how bad things are. You just know it hurts.”
Crates was immediately whisked to hospital where he underwent surgery for four hours and had his right arm amputated just below the shoulder.
Within 36 hours of receiving the phone call, his parents had flown out to be by his bedside.
He spent three days in ICU and a further three days after that, convinced the doctors to let him leave the hospital for lunch.
A further four days on, he completed the remaining 60km of that poignant journey with his parents.
Despite losing half of his blood, Crates did not require a blood transfusion, meaning he needed four weeks of recovery before being well and strong enough to fly to England.
And it was then that the reality of the new path for his life began to hit home.
Crates was an engineer by trade who still held ambitions of a semi-professional rugby career.
A year on from the accident, he did manage to play for his club in their annual anniversary fixture – and kept playing able-bodied rugby until a couple of years ago when he finally hung up his boots aged 49.
But another passion took centre stage for a while – before launching his athletics career.
Crates had learnt to scuba dive during his year in Australia and went back to Oz a few years after the fateful collision to learn to be an instructor – which in turn led to jobs in Spain and with sharks closer to home.
He added: “I couldn’t just get a job.
“Scuba diving was the coolest thing on the planet. I fell in love with it. The male instructors got a lot of attention from the females on the boat.
“I went back to Australia, trained as a scuba diving instructor and worked there for nine months.
“I was a good diver and a lot of it was in the classroom or pool but I had to be very good at explaining because I couldn’t do things right-handed.
“There were no grey areas with getting someone back on to a boat or mouth-to-mouth underwater – it was pass or fail. I passed.
“I came back to the UK and realised it’s a lot colder here and the River Thames isn’t quite as exciting as the Great Barrier Reef.
“So I was a shark display diver at the Sea-Life Centre, going in the shark tank four times a week and swimming with the 20 sharks. It was great fun.”
Crates also worked as a diving instructor in Spain but then focused on athletics, with his arm amputation allowing him to run without the need for prosthetics.
He trained alongside four-time Olympian Donna Fraser and earned a spot at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics.
Crates, though, admitted he “stuffed” the 400m T46 final by going out too slowly and ended up finishing third.
But inspired to go two better than his bronze, the Essex star stepped up to the 800m – initially to bolster his strength and endurance for the 400m before settling at the two-lap distance.
And it proved the right call as he went on to secure a gold medal at the Paralympics in Athens 2004.
Four years after that, Crates carried the flag at the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony but had to withdraw from the Games due to injury and retired the following year – as a world champion, Olympic gold medallist and world-record holder.
He explained: “I trained completely non-disabled, and the reason I did that, and I train with all the Olympians.
“I didn’t want them to just see me as a Paralympian. I wanted them to see me as an athlete, an athlete first and foremost.
“I was a lot faster than most of the 800m runners, so my sprint finish was stronger than theirs. That was my superpower. The sprint finish.
“I went into Athens expecting to win the gold medal.
“I don’t think I was always the fastest, but I was very tactically aware, so I could always sense what was going on in the race. I could feel it.
“It’s a long way down the home straight because you can feel them. You can hear them, you can almost smell them coming. It was more relief than joy.
“I finally got my world title in 2006, it took me nine years to win.
“I broke the world record in 2004 before the Athens Games and I was ranked number one in the world.”
Crates wanted to step from the track to the studio and moved into the media after his athletics career, covering the 2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024 Paralympics as a co-commentator and pundit.
But his media work spread much further with a BBC food programme and even a radio show.
Then in 2015, he returned to TV screens in the tenth series of Celebrity Masterchef, appearing alongside Chesney Hawkes, Rylan Clarke and winner Kimberly Wyatt.
Crates said: “I’ve done different little bits, but to actually break into it and make it your job was sort of something I wanted to do.
“I love cooking. I can cook but I can’t create.
“I was trying to chop everything up, and then they just said, ‘Dan there’s machines and tools that will do that for you.’ But I was trying to do it one handed.
“I famously went to Master Chef and said, ‘Well, at least I’ve got one arm so I won’t cut myself with a knife.’ And I managed to do that!
“I cut myself with a razor-sharp potato peeler!”
Crates – who is now a dad – has also launched his own business, bringing together keynote speaking, event hosting, leadership consultancy and coaching for companies.
He treats every speech “like a race” to try and do better to constantly improve, with that inner competitiveness still going strong.
Reflecting on how his life has panned out since the accident 30 years ago, he said: “The practicalities of being an arm amputee, it’s not the worst thing in the world, right? There’s worse things that can happen.
“Would I like two arms again? Yes, it would make life a lot easier.
“But would I change what happened to me? No because what happened to me defined me as a person and led me down the path. I know I’ve been down and I’ve had a really good life since my accident.
“The only thing I would change or do differently is I would have had travel insurance because I would still have one arm, but I’d just have had a few more quid in my pocket.”
