My story - in a nutshell
Hi, my name is Ulla and this is the timeline of my story in a nutshell. In March 2002 an accident happened and I was left paralyzed. I was 15 years old. In May that year, I entered rehab and on August 12th I got out of rehab. On August 13th 2002 - yes, the next day I moved to another city to live on my own and started studying to be an airplane mechanic. In December that year, I went back to the slopes, this time with a monoski. In January 2003 I won the first national championships for people with disabilities in Alpine skiing. From then on... I'll fast forward it a bit 😅😅 2004 - Scandinavian championship silver medal in giant slalom / alpine skiing 2004 - national championship bronze medal in Slalom, giant slalom and super g / alpine skiing 2005 - European cup silver medalist in giant slalom / alpine skiing 2005 - European cup bronze medalist in slalom / alpine skiing 2006.
I graduated as an airplane mechanic with another degree in information technology in 2006. This is also when I started building show cars and ended up with several trophies I won with my car. I also started multihull sailing and engineering studies in 2008. I also started paragliding the same year and took 4th place in British national championships with Challenger trimaran/sailing. In 2009 my son was born and I got married. I started working as a mechanical engineer and a boat designer as well as studying engineering in 2010. I graduated as boat manufacturing engineer and in 2012 got divorced, found a new guy, and worked as a tattoo artist in my own shop, until 2014.
Racing with motorcycles with SCI
At this point, I decided to go back to work as a mechanical design engineer and decided to build myself a motorcycle. In 2015 my daughter was born and I got my motorcycle ready. I flew to the UK to try out as a motorcycle racer and started racing against able-bodied racers in Finland with 600cc motorcycles. I became the first paraplegic female racer in the world, as well as working as a design engineer full time. I qualified for the disabled world championship and became a world champion.
This was in 2017 when I also broke up with my boyfriend and later this same year moved to another city, fell in love when least expected, and got married. I also raced against able-bodied racers in Finland. In 2018 I was promoted to a senior design engineer at work and won another series of world championships, continued racing in Finland against able-bodied racers, and finished in 6th place. Had a bad crash just before the world championship finals ending my season too soon. I took a 1 season break from racing because of a broken femur from the accident. I went back to school and graduated later with a Race motorbike motorsport specialist degree in motorsport engineering. Worked full time with the leg being broken and cast 😅. Got the cast off in July and went back to racing. In 2020 I continued training hard, working hard and hopefully in August and September I will be back in racing with the world championship 😊😊 I work as a senior design engineer and I have been designing stuff like warship control bridges, oil recovery machinery, aluminum workboats, control panels for surgery halls, ocean liner control bridges, armored vehicles for army, elevator stuff etc.. I have my own company and I make special custom designs for street bikes and racebikes use and I manufacture them with 3D printing.
