A former Keswick School pupil has returned from Australia after winning two golds and a silver in the World Transplant Games.
Cystic Fibrosis sufferer Peter Knox, 32, competed in Perth and won gold medals in the individual tennis and squash competitions. He also won silver in the men’s doubles tennis competition.
Peter underwent a life-saving double lung transplant in June 2017 at Harefield Hospital in Middlesex and spent the next 18 months fighting a serious infection. He eventually needed more surgery to remove infected bone from his sternum and ribs.
But he pulled through and took up sport once more and at the British Transplant Games in Newport in 2019 he won gold medals for squash and tennis and in the European Transplant Games in Oxford last summer he picked up a gold and silver in the tennis competitions but was unfortunately injured during the squash tournament.
“I am delighted and proud,” said Peter, who now lives in Exeter and works as a statistician. “I had the transplant five-and-a-half years ago and I knew about the World Transplant Games and it was an ambition to compete in them albeit a very distant dream. It has taken a long time to get here.”
Peter, who was brought up in Eaglesfield, Cockermouth, where his parents, John and Jenny, still live used to train at Lorton Tennis Club and Cockermouth Squash Club.
In his early 20s his lung function started to fail and he was on oxygen and put on the transplant list.
“I quit sport in 2014 because I could not keep up anymore,” said Peter, who studied maths at Warwick University. “I was pretty depressed because there was not a lot going on. Mum and Dad were brilliant and moved down to look after me.
“Fortunately I just had to wait four months for my transplant and it has transformed my life completely. For the first couple of years I had complications with infections but I was then able to get into sport once again.”
He now plans to take part in the Great North Run later this year and perhaps participate in a marathon.
“I have done the Great North Run twice before, not particularly quickly with my old lungs. Perhaps I can go a bit faster with my new ones.”
