David Smith (rower)

David Smith MBE (born 21 April 1978) is a British adaptive rower who won a gold medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.

Smith was born on 21 April 1978 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. He was born with a club foot and for the first three years of his life he had his bones repeatedly broken and reset to correct his foot's alignment.

He graduated from the University of Bath in 2009 with a bachelor's degree in sports performance.

In 2010 he underwent emergency surgery after doctors found a tumour inside his spinal cord at cervical spine level. The surgery left him temporarily paralysed, an issue that was later determined to be the result of a blood clot.

He earned a Black Belt in Karate and was is the British squad for 6 years. He took up sprinting in a desire to compete at the Olympics as karate was not an Olympic sport, and became East of Scotland 400m champion in mainstream athletics, and took third in the 200m behind Olympian Ian Mackie. But running round bends caused stress fractures which forced him to quit.

He turned to bobsleigh, because straight-line running was fine and made the GB team as a brakeman. But neck and back pains interrupted training and he missed a 2006 Winter Olympics spot by one-hundredth of a second.

Smith was introduced to adaptive rowing in 2009 at a Paralympic Potential Day run by the British Paralympic Association. He competes in the legs, trunks and arms adaptive mixed coxed four (LTAMix4+) event in which he won a gold medal at the 2009 World Rowing Championships, competing in a crew with Vicky Hansford, Naomi Riches, James Roe and cox Rhiannon Jones.

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