Para is the new normal

PARA-NORMAL is the infectious vibe of these Commonwealth Games because it has turned a swimmer without legs like Adelaide gold medallist Jesse Aungles into an emblem of all he can do, rather than what he can’t.

The feeling is everywhere. It’s at the pool, it was with inspirational Lauren Parker in triathlon, even when she tumbled, and it was at the track yesterday where wheelchair athlete Kurt Fearnley raced his heat and beamed: “Life’s great.”

That from an inspirational three-time Paralympic gold medallist who did the Kokoda Track. He crawled it.

Para-swimming silver medallist Ellie Cole has been competing for more than a decade and has sensed the strong wind of change.

“Perception is changing of people with disabilities,” said Cole, who lost her right leg to a rare cancer as a three-year-old.

“A constant theme in the many messages I’ve got is from people saying they are going to get off the couch and exercise because seeing a para-athlete race they realise they have no real excuse.

“The ones I really love have come from parents of kids with disabilities who say their child has just lost a leg to cancer and they want to be like me.”

Aungles, 22, has risen way above a malformed right leg and a lower left leg amputation, making every journalist who interviewed him after his 200m individual medley gold on Sunday night feel they had to lift their games in life.

He’s studying in Canberra, learning Japanese ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics and wants to be a diplomat.

“At 11 or 12, I was actually not very good and even others with the same disability would have smashed me in the pool,” he said. “The message is stick with it and you never know where you will end up.”