Luck is in the eye of the beholder.

Yarmouth’s Ryan Shay thinks he’s plenty fortunate, his paralyzing injury aside.

“I always saw the positive in things,” he says. “Right from the get-go in the hospital, I took it very well. It was weird.”

Once a five-foot-11, 175-pound hockey player strong enough on his feet to play in the Nova Scotia major midget ranks, the 20-year-old has found a new life, and a new dedication, as one of the fastest young wheelchair sprinters in the world.

His life hit a bend in the road — literally — early in 2013. A car accident placed his life in a wheelchair, but couldn’t confine, or define, him.

A wheelchair athlete for the past year, he’s seen parts of the world he could only have imagined. He’s dreaming big dreams, the next Paralympics in Brazil in 2016 among them.

“I want to have the world record; it’s going to happen,” says Shay, possessor of a sunny countenance and a seemingly indefatigable spirit.

“I want to be on posters. In rehab, they had posters of the basketball players. I want to be on a poster.”

His mother, Monette, calls him an inspiration.

“His attitude has been remarkable from the start,” she says. “I think I was having a harder time than he was and he said, ‘Mom, get over it.’

“There’s never been any anger, no self-pity. It hasn’t been perfect and he’s had his moments, but he’s never faltered and gone into a depression.”

Wolfville’s Ueli Albert has been his coach since last July. He said Shay arrived ahead of schedule and was well equipped to take instruction after playing hockey at a high level.

“It was early into his injury,” Albert says. “Usually it takes a year or two for athletes just to know how to live their lives after an accident. It was only seven months for him, but he was really fit and that made me believe he was ready.”

His strength is at 100 metres, where, in a borrowed racing chair, he has a best time around 20 seconds. He’s been faster than that in practice, not so far from the age-group world record of just under 17 seconds.

As was the case in the first days of rehabilitation, the competition is more with himself than against an opponent.

He played soccer and hockey growing up. Basketball, too, but it wasn’t his favourite.

In one year in junior high, he played every sport offered, except for basketball.

Wrestling, golf, volleyball, badminton, track and field and cross-country were part of his insatiable athletic diet.

His parents were athletic. So were his two brothers.

Eventually, he got to a place where he had to narrow his focus. He played soccer in the summer, but hockey was about to take up a bigger slice of his life.

He’d managed to come out of the Yarmouth minor hockey program, a smallish defensive-minded blue-liner with a mean streak and a willingness to skate into dangerous places.

He has a table covered in trophies from his hockey days — one for being a game MVP in an elite bantam tournament in 2008.

The South Shore Mustangs weren’t the best team in the major midget league by far when he arrived for his first of three seasons in 2009.

He had to sacrifice. He lived and went to high school for the first semester in Bridgewater and would return to Yarmouth for the second semester, commuting to continue with the team.

He and his defensive partner, Ron Marsh, kept it simple most days.

“Me and my buddy would just go out there and hit people,” Shay says. “We had fun. And we would keep the puck out of the net. We did our jobs.

“But it was getting to the point in hockey where they were looking for defencemen who could skate the puck up the ice and shoot and score.”

Maybe, if the stars had aligned, he might have received an offer to play in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. He’d probably have earned a fair look in the Maritime junior A league.

He was a realist, though. He’d spent most of his hockey life at the bottom of the food chain and scouts weren’t exactly beating down his door. “I had other goals in life, more realistic goals,” he says.

Fitness was his thing, long before he could have imagined his current life. His midget team did testing in his last year and he graded out near the top.

The year after he finished hockey was a time to figure out the next phase of his life. He knew university was part of his plan, but just didn’t know what or when.

He was living just outside Yarmouth with two friends. He was upgrading a course from high school to improve his post-secondary prospects.

In January, he was driving toward town, not far from the airport, when he approached a sharp right turn. He hit a bump and lost control of his car, a 1992 Honda Prelude.

With a passenger to his right and another in the back seat, the car rolled.

His passengers would be fine. But not Shay.

He was conscious through some of it. He remembers little.

A passerby called for help and the second phase of Shay’s life began.

Transferred to Halifax, doctors performed surgery the next morning.

His C7 vertebra was dislocated and the injury pulled his spinal cord forward, causing bruising at the C8 level.

Also, the right facet joint fractured on the C7 vertebra. Doctors grafted bone from his hip to help it grow back.

Two rods and six screws held together the worst of the damage.

His life was saved, but the repercussions were severe.

A C7/C8 quadriplegic, he has no movement below the chest. While his arms and shoulders are powerful, he lost some mobility in his hands.

He has numbness on the outside of his arms and in his pinky and ring fingers.

The limitations in his hands are barely limitations at all. He has the use of his thumb and index finger on each side that allows him the grip he needs to push the chair.

His right hand is much better than his left, but as long as he has some flexibility in his hands he can strengthen the muscles.

He spent more than two months in hospital. In the early days he could barely raise his arms or move his hands. He couldn’t sit up.

He spent two months in rehabilitation, a span that included his 19th birthday. He was making terrific progress.

He got home for 10 days, but had a setback — autonomic dysreflexia — related to the injury. His blood pressure spiked and he had thundering headaches.

He went back into rehab for another three months. He didn’t have to do the occupational therapy or the physical therapy he had already done, but did it anyway to get stronger.

Suddenly, Shay needed something more strenuous to satisfy him.

Last July, one of his physiotherapists took him to Saint Mary’s to meet Annapolis Valley wheelchair racer Ben Brown, already an accomplished para-athlete.

“It just looked cool, it looked fun,” Shay says.

Brown offered him some encouragement, saying that his raw strength would give him the chance to be among the best racers in the world. “I got pretty excited about it.”

The following week Shay met up with Albert, the former Dalhousie athlete who coaches a stable of athletes with disabilities across Nova Scotia.

Thirty pounds lighter than he was when he played hockey, it took Shay a while before he could get a race chair that would fit.

The training day has its obstacles.

Shay must assemble his regular wheelchair to transfer from his car, then assemble his racing chair. He needs his teeth to put on his racing gloves.

Albert believes it takes years for someone like Shay to reach his maximum. The two of them set out a six-year plan.

Shay went to a training camp in Atlanta after he and Albert met. It was Albert’s way to see if he could handle travelling and a rigorous training schedule. “He handled it really well, faster than anybody else I’ve ever seen.”

In his first year he’s trained and competed across North America and in Europe.

Earlier this month he competed in the International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports World Games in England. He placed first in the 100 and 200 and second in the 400, lowering his best time at that distance by 13 seconds.

He has an event in Dubai in his sights next year, but that will depend on some national team funding to be determined this fall. He needs a custom racing chair, out of his reach at this point at $6,000.

His mother is certain her son’s athletic background has been instrumental in his recovery.

“That competitive sports attitude has carried him a long way,” she says. “These para-athletics are giving him a reason to keep going and to make the most of every day.”

Albert said he’s had to teach Shay patience. It’s like asking a fish to slow down its swimming program.

“He wants it all to happen right at once,” he says. “There were some points I had to tell him that it takes time. But looking back now he’s excelled a lot quicker than other athletes have.”

The possibilities, Albert says, are unlimited.

“If he continues to improve the way he has, I see a strong chance to make the 2016 (Paralympic) team and maybe even medal in 2020.”

For Shay, being a wheelchair athlete has already opened many doors he might have thought were closed to him. He’s quick with a line, and a smile, and wants to do some public speaking.

Some days are better than others, but they are all better than none at all. The really bad ones are few.

The bend in the road led to more twists than he ever could have imagined.

“I like seeing people and I love travelling. I love to work out.

“I’m in shape. I feel good.”