‘LUCKY’ LIVES DREAM –
LAKEISHA ‘Lucky’ Patterson was 13, sitting in her living room watching the 2012 Paralympics, when she said she was going to be a Paralympian.
Her mum Sherryn remembers thinking, “you have got to be kidding yourself”.
Patterson has cerebral palsy after suffering a stroke at birth.
She spotted a swimmer with the same disability lining up to compete at the 2012 Games and decided she wanted to do the same.
“That is what I want to do Mum, can you take me to the pool,” Patterson said.
Mum said she didn’t really have a choice.
“That was it, we were at the pool every morning,’’ she said. “I thought it would last a week or two but it has been 4am getups for the past nine years.”
Patterson was a natural in the pool and had a strong competitive streak.
She launched her competitive career in 2013 and represented Australia at the Commonwealth Games in 2014. A year later she won gold, two silver and two bronze medals at the 2015 World Championships.
She proved to be one of Australia’s most successful Paralympic swimmers in 2016, winning gold in the women’s 400m freestyle S8 in a worldrecord time. She returned home with two gold, three silver and a bronze.
Patterson has had to withdraw from many of her events in Tokyo due to a continuing regression in her condition that has left her quite ill.
She was still scheduled to compete in her strongest event, the S9 400m women’s freestyle race, which is one of the first of the Paralympics.