It’s a big year for McGrath, who welcomed his first child a month ago and is now fighting to become a five-time Paralympic gold medallist. Here are 10 Paralympians to watch.
Curtis McGrath was laid on a stretcher, bleeding and in shock. He had just lost both his legs in a mine blast while serving as a combat engineer in Afghanistan in 2012. As he was being carried by his squad mates, he quipped: he would go to the Paralympics.“It was a traumatic day for everyone, and if I could say something to hopefully alleviate that, that’s why I said what I said.”
“The skills I learnt in the military helped me to persevere, to keep going when it got tough and be quite resourceful,” he says.Heading into the Paris Games, which kick off with the opening ceremony on Wednesday, McGrath knows he has a target on his back as he prepares to defend his titles. This year’s games will have 549 events across 22 sports. Each sport has numerous classifications to account for different degrees of impairment.
“It’s a big logistical exercise, considering that most commercial airlines will only take two to four wheelchair users per flight, and we have a wheelchair rugby team of 12 athletes, 10 of whom are daily wheelchair users, and that’s just one team,” McLoughlin says.She says the Olympic village, where all the athletes are staying, is the most accessible in a long time: every room is wheelchair-friendly.
Australia has 160 athletes competing in Paris. As well as McGrath, here is a small taste of the country’s extraordinary list of medal hopefuls to watch.Wheelchair racer de Rozario made her Paralympics debut in Beijing in 2008 at the age of 14 and has become a six-time Paralympic medallist. Low was 15 when she stumbled from a crowded platform into the path of an oncoming train. She survived, but lost her legs and sustained broken bones and injuries to her head and back.Paralympian, skier and sprinter Scott Reardon. After both competed in Tokyo, Reardon retired to start a family together. Low gave birth to their first son, Matteo, in June 2022.
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