We were pleased to be a headline sponsor of British Paralympic Athlete, Shelly Woods. We supported Shelly from 2019 to the end of her 2022 competitive year. Shelly is currently taking a break from competitive racing to have her second child. We hope to support Shelly again in the future.
Photo: Great Britain’s Shelly Woods competing in the Women’s 1500m T54 Final on day nine of the London 2012 Paralympic Games in London.
Shelly is a T54 wheelchair racing athlete who has competed at the highest level in the sport. Her achievements to date include winning:
- silver in the Marathon at the London Paralympic Games in 2012
- silver and bronze medals in the 1500m and 500m events at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, and
- winning the London Marathon in both 2012 and 2007.
For a bit of insight into the wheelchair racing and events that Shelly’s involved with, take a look at her video, here.
More about Shelly
As an active child, Shelly was always extremely competitive and heavily into sport. Following a tragic accident at the age of 11 when Shelly fell from a tree during a game of hide and seek with friends, however, she was left paralysed from the waist down after breaking her back at the T12 vertebrae, leaving her wheelchair bound.
As a naturally competitive individual, Shelly didn’t let that stop her. She began wheelchair racing at the age of 16 and competing on a national level shortly after. Shelly’s natural flair, hard work and determination has enabled huge success for her and, as well as public speaking and school visits, racing has been her full time career ever since.
We were introduced to Shelly by her husband, Chris Oxley – who is a partner in our Manchester office. Following the birth of their son in 2017, during which time Shelly took a short break from competition, she has been training six days a week in order to get back to her competitive peak. Her first competition after her return was the Manchester 10km in May of 2019, which she won. She then quickly followed that success with two further wins in the following week at both the Westminster Mile and the London 10km.
Despite Shelly previously receiving funding from UK Athletics and other leading sponsors, including the likes of BP, British Airways, Nestle, BMW and Adidas, she found herself without a main sponsor at the end of 2019. We of course jumped at the chance to provide financial support to Shelly.
Since beginning our support for Shelly, she placed second at the end of 2019 at the Singapore Marathon, first at the Vitality Big Half Marathon in 2020 and first in the 2021 Great North run, also completing three marathons in just three weeks in 2021 across Berlin, London and Boston (which you may have seen covered on our social media feeds).
To follow Shelly’s progress and keep an eye on her achievements throughout the year, you can follow her on Twitter @ShellyWoods86, and we will also be sharing updates via the UHY Twitter account @UHYHackerYoung and on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/company/uhy-hacker-young. For all posts relating to Shelly we will be using the hashtag #UHY4Shelly
For more information about our sponsorship or corporate social responsibility programme, please contact National Executive Director Zoë Paradine.