A paraplegic amputee man overcame his car crash injuries to make history as the first to complete the world’s deadliest dive.
Shaun Gash, 55, was left paralyzed from the chest down after he was flung 150 yards from a car in a horror crash when he was just 20.
Determined Shaun has since lived a life of adventure – and lost half his right leg in a mountaineering accident in 2018.
But it hasn’t held him back and after he canoed the 190-mile length of the Zambezi river, in 2024, he took on the Blue Hole in Dahab, Egypt.
It is widely considered the deadliest dive site in the world, earning it the nickname the ‘Diver’s Cemetery’, with unconfirmed reports of up to 200 deaths in recent decades.
He has now set a world record as the first paraplegic amputee to complete the dive, which took him six years to train for.
Gash, a product specialist and motivational speaker from Lancaster, said: “I’m strong, I’m 55 and I feel great.
“I feel like I’m 21 and I can achieve anything.
“I carry on doing the things I do so I can stay strong.
“I plan to keep pushing my wheelchair for as long as I can.
“I’m so proud of completing the Blue Hole dive.
“There’s a list on the wall there of all the divers who didn’t make it, and I did.
“I was very low after the crash – I felt suicidal, but once I accepted me and my body, I thought ‘you’ve just got to live life, what could possibly go wrong now’.
“My worst-case scenario had happened, the biggest risk left was dying, and that’s true for everyone.”
Gash suffered a T5 spinal cord injury, broke four ribs and his left shoulder and punctured both his lungs after the car he was a passenger in took a corner badly on June 30, 1991.
His parents were told he might live two days and while Gash survived he was told he’d never walk again.
“It took me along time to accept what had happened,” he said.
In rehab Gash realized there was a lot he could still do.
He said: “I had my upper body strength, I saw people who didn’t have that.
“I’m determined not to need an electric wheelchair, so I train really hard.”
He met his wife Dawn, 54, a nurse and support worker, and they had three children.
Gash’s right leg was crushed while he was climbing Ben Nevis in June 2018, and had to be amputated below the knee.
Gash first canoed the length of the Zambezi with his dad when he was 15, and, after his accident he promised himself he’d do it again.
He and his friends set off in their canoes on October 25, 2024 and took seven days to cover the 300km from Chirundu in Zambia to Mozambique.
Gash didn’t worry about lions, hippos, or crocodiles and wasn’t phased when they heard hyenas eating a buffalo near their tents at night.
He said: “I could hear them roaring, it was quite thrilling.
“I had no exit strategy – they’d just eat me.”
Gash trained for six years for his Blue Hole dive in Egypt, in September 2025.
He holds three world record – the first classified diver to hit 40m down, to be underwater for 60 minutes, and to complete the Blue Hole.
The dive involves a 30m descent followed by a 300m swim to a huge hole.
“It’s like the abyss,” Gash said, “Nobody like me has ever attempted it before.
“I think I did it with about ten minutes of air consumption left.”
The Blue Hole is a 100-meter deep sinkhole connected to the open sea by long tunnel (the Arch).
The length of the tunnel combined with the depth means divers consume their air much faster.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
