Legacy matters for Para sports
“One of our values is to respect our opponents, our people and our facilities.
“We hold ourselves to a high regard, so when we’re going somewhere, you take your drink bottles, rubbish, whatever, we hold ourselves accountable to a professional standard.
“One day we were at our training facility at Essendon, with the Bombers - we share facilities at The Hangar doing a training camp.
“Everyone had done their thing and gone to bench, and one of our athletes spoke up and said, ‘Guys, grab your water bottles, this isn’t good enough’. And the team was like, ‘Yeah, sorry’, and cleaned up. And the fact that the staff didn’t have to say it, and it was one of our low-functioning athletes, who might be sitting there not getting the glory for scoring the goals, stood up to the team, was one of the times that told me the culture was working across the board.
“We live by our Steelers Way, as we call it. We are the Australian wheelchair rugby team. A part of that is setting ourselves high standards and wanting to be best team in the world, and the way to do that is to beat the best teams.”
Bond and Ryley Batt are the top dogs of the team, while emerging stars James
McQuillan and Beau Vernon have also been crucial to the team’s recent success.
“Tokyo was tricky for us. We went in as favourites, we’d had a really good run in the eight years prior, winning back-to-back good medals at the Paralympic Games in London and Rio, for the first time in history,” Bond said.
“Then there were a few things that went wrong for us. It was during the Covid global pandemic, and being such a large country, it impacted our ability to get together for training camps and everything essential to prepare for a campaign, whereas other countries eased their
The Australian Diving Team has continued its strong build-up to Paris, capturing two silver and two bronze at the Diving World Cup in Berlin and backing up their strong results from the recent Montreal World Cup.
Maddison Keeney (pictured) finished with silver in the women’s 3m springboard, up from fourth in Montreal, scoring 344.75 to sit behind Yiwen Chen’s (China) restrictions a little earlier. We also didn’t have the best make-up of squad, in terms of actual positions for some of our key players.
“One of our key players went down sick, 0.5 athlete Michael Ozanne.
“The nature of sport is based on classifications, so the lineup of me and Ryley (Batt) we are both 3.5 players and we have two 0.5 players – we didn’t have any other back-up so we couldn’t actually play that line-up.
“That did us dirty. The coaching staff have learned from that, and we’ve put a squad together to make sure we’ve got back-ups.”
The 2032 Paralympic Games have the power to change the lives of Australians living with disabilities, but Paralympian Michael Dobbie-Bridges has warned there won’t be much of a legacy if organisers aren’t willing to foot the bill for more infrastructure.
Dobbie-Bridges represented Australia in wheelchair tennis at the Beijing Games and at six World Team Cups and is now the chair of the board for Sporting Wheelies.
A Brisbane resident, Dobbie-Bridges was disappointed to hear plans for the Gabba redevelopment had been scrapped in favour of giving QSAC a facelift.
“I still have serious doubts about the decisions that have occurred,” Dobbie-Bridges said. “Hopefully that is just a starting point and not the final place where they’ve landed.
“QSAC is not the right call for a bunch of reasons in terms of location, access for people with a disability, and the impact it will have on athletes being displaced from their training venue for a period of time while the renovations are happening.
“Those athletes will have no real understanding of where they’re going to go and how they can have world-class facilities to hopefully win medals in 2032.”
Dobbie-Bridges said he was aware of the challenges posed 356.40. She then paired with Anabelle Smith in the women’s 3m synchronised to nab another silver medal, improving on their bronze in Montreal, with a score of 296.73 to only trail the US’s winning pair on 303.21. Cassiel Rousseau also collected two bronze medals, in the men’s 10m platform (476.90) and men’s 10m synchronised with Domonic Bedggood (402.57). by upgrading The Gabba – but said as it stood it was near impossible for people with a disability to access.
He finds it almost impossible to take his four-year-old son along with him to the Gabba.
“I have to be driven there and there are no safe drop-off points for someone in a wheelchair,” he said.
“Then if you’re on the wrong side of the ground there’s hills to get up to get to where you need to get to – it’s just poorly designed.”
Dobbie-Bridges said it wasn’t just the stadiums the organising committee needed to consider in order for the Brisbane 2032 Paralympics to create a legacy.
As it stands, there are huge roadblocks preventing many people from taking up or trying a parasport.
Lack of funding means there is often a hefty cost associated with taking up a parasport – particularly those that require a wheelchair. Dobbie-Bridges said it cost him $17,000 for his new tennis chair and $16,000 for his AFL chair.
“It’s harder for people now because of the funding changes and there are less sports around. It’s so expensive you can’t just turn up and have a go,” Dobbie-Bridges said.
Statistics proved how much of a legacy the London Paralympics left for people in the UK with a disability.
“Four years post the London Games, an extra million people with a disability found a job,” Dobbie-Bridges said.