Bear Grylls: Parachuting back injury still hurts every day
The adventurer fractured his vertebrae during an SAS training exercise in 1996.
Bear Grylls has said he still feels the pain of breaking his back in a parachuting accident “every day”.
The adventurer and TV star, 46, went through a year of rehabilitation after fracturing three vertebrae in 1996 during an SAS training exercise that went wrong.
Grylls was skydiving over Zambia at the age of 21 when his parachute failed to inflate and he landed on his pack.
Sharing photos of his back and its treatment on Instagram, he wrote: “People sometimes ask me if my back ever hurts having broken it all those years ago in a parachuting accident.
“The answer is every day. And the treatment I get for it can be quite intense but life can at times be a battle for everyone and most people have their stuff to carry with them through the adventures.
“I choose just to be grateful for the opportunity to still be able to live life as best I can.
“PS second photo is the ice treatment I do every day that helps keep me strong inside and out!”
Less than two years after the accident, Grylls reached the summit of Mount Everest.
At the time, he was the youngest Briton to reach the summit of the world’s highest peak in Nepal.
But he has said he felt the record belonged to Michael Matthews, the brother of Made In Chelsea star Spencer Matthews, who was 22 when he disappeared on the mountain in 1999.
