P.E.I.'s Tom Nicholls: from deathbed to world powerlifting champion
Islander told he would never lift weights again
It's hard not to notice Tom Nicholls enter a room — chin beard, tattoos up both massive arms, and a man bun, one he fashioned well before the urban hipsters.
Yet, it's what you don't see that's the measure of the new world powerlifting champion.
One of the tattoos on the Charlottetown athlete's arms reads May 12, 2012. Not that Nicholls needs ink to remind him of that day.
He wasn't.
"It was frustrating all the time, but I was never, never, never depressed, or thought that I would never get better again. So that always kept driving me."
"And really it's only been since last November probably that I have felt more like me."
Tattoos mark Nicholl's journey
Three years later he has regained sight in an eye that went blind, learned to walk after leaving hospital in a wheelchair and found the ability to turn his neck on a spine that was compressed in the crash
And he lifts weights again. A lot of weight, close to 700 pounds at a time.
"The primary goal to drive me thorough physio, rehab and all that was to get at the weights again, and to use that to help get better."
Nicholls has helped build the sport of powerlifting in Canada.
One of his tattoos is resume of sorts: a handful of small Canadian maple leafs for national championships, and a few larger ones for his Commonwealth and world championship.
The collection will grow again after winning the powerlifting world championship over the weekend in Finland. A goal he set while laying in a hospital bed three years ago.
"The end result was to get back at the worlds, and leave the sport on my own terms and not on the terms of a racing accident."
Traumatic brain injury
And while the old Nicholls may be back, there's one more tattoo that rounds out the story, a green ribbon and three bold letters, TBI, the commonly-used acronym for traumatic brain injury.
Nicholls has a frontal lobe injury that won't heal. Traumatic brain injury is never the same twice, and the way it affects each person is different too.
"It's your emotional centre and that can be anywhere from being happy, being angry, being sad," Nicholls said, adding that the TBI also affects his short-term memory and causes fatigue.
Nicholls said lifting with his peers one more time would mark the end of his career … maybe.
"I'm done this year is all I'm going to say at this time, I'm done in 2015. No doubt about it, I'm done," Nichols says with a broad smile. "There is one more competition that I may still go to, the Commonwealths in December."
Might be worth putting Nicholl's tattoo artist on notice.