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Qian Hongyan, now aged 18, went on to win the 100 metre breast stroke at the 10th annual Para Games – despite her swimming coach telling her that without legs she would be like a boat without a rudder and would never be any good.

Qian was just four when she lost both her legs when a speeding trucker left her for dead as she crossed the main road in her village of Zhuangshang in southern China, as her horrified mother looked on.

Doctors said it was a miracle she was alive after they had been forced to amputate her entire body below the waist.

Mum Zhou Huan-ping said: "The image of my little girl disappearing under those huge wheels that were taller than she was will haunt me for the rest of my life.

"I saw her at the last second but was on the other side of the street and I was powerless to do anything to stop it."

For nearly two years Qian was immobile as she didn’t even have enough of her body left to sit up in a wheelchair.

Doctors said her only hope of being able to move by herself again would be extensive surgery to allow her to be fitted with prosthetic limbs.

"They were very kind but told me the operation and the limbs would could hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly more than a million.

"We're simple workers. I made 20 USD a month at a factory. We could never afford that kind of treatment," added Qian's mum.

Qian was discharged from hospital after her sixth birthday measuring 18 inches high (45cm) after doctors removed her legs, her hip joints, as well as her lower ribs leaving her with just a pointed stump where her waist used to be.

For the first month her parents racked their brains to come up with a way of moving Qian around.

Then her granddad Yuan came up with a simple but brilliant idea after watching local children play basketball.

He took a basketball the village boys had discarded and cut a hole just big enough for tiny Qian to fit into, padded the inside with stiff floor mats from his car, then propped her up inside.

All of a sudden Qian was able to stabilise herself and was able to by move herself by rolling the ball in any direction she wanted to go and supporting herself with wooden handles.

"It was a miracle," said Zhou.

"We had struggled for almost two years with all the help modern medicine could offer us and got nowhere.

"Then from nowhere my father came up with the basketball idea and Lin was able to move again."

From that day on Qian would not be stopped by any obstacle. She went back to school, started to play with her friends again, and started to get back the life of any girl her age.

She began professional swimming training in 2007 and defied the odds of her double amputation to become one of the first members of the Yunnan Youth Swimming Club.

She won three gold medals in last year's Yunnan Para Games and took a gold and two silver medals at the National Swimming Championship for the Disabled (Under 18) in 2009 before continuing impressively at this year’s Para Games.