‘I’M DREAMING OF A GOLD MEDAL’
Paratriathlete Lauren is set to give it her all in Tokyo
Lauren Parker loved the water before anything else, so when the former youth swimmer and then champion triathlete floated in a rehab pool, unable to paddle a few metres, she realised she was at a crucial turning point.
It was six months after a freak accident shattered Lauren’s spinal cord and her dreams of being a world champion. It had already been a long and arduous journey just to get in the pool and now she couldn’t swim.
“I pushed off the wall and I basically sank,” Lauren remembers. “That was one of the most devastating days since the accident.’’
But coach and confidant Brad Fernley was on the side of the pool, ready to cheer her on.
“Brad told me I had two choices – I could get out of the water and go to bed, or I could swim as many laps as possible and never give up.’’
Lauren chose the latter. She pushed off the wall again and swam three “very, very slow laps” and left the pool with a smile.
Within a few months, she had competed in her first paratriathlon. Inside a year, she was on the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games’ dais with a bronze medal and the following year she won gold at the World Championships in Switzerland.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
But next weekend is the big one when Lauren is set to represent Australia in the Tokyo Paralympics. There she’ll compete in the paratriathlon – a gruelling 750m swim, 20km hand cycle and 5km run in a racing wheelchair.
And she’s already visualising winning a certain medal.
“I’ve got it in the back of my mind,” she tells Woman’s Day, smiling. “I’m focusing on getting that gold medal.”
And while having the event put back a year due to the pandemic was a blow, Lauren says the extra training time ended up being a bonus.
“I might have been unmotivated for a couple of days but then I thought, ‘Well, given I have another year to prepare, I’ll be fitter, stronger and faster!’” she laughs.
But it’s not been an easy year. In March, Lauren was in hospital for 20 days on IV antibiotics and had to undergo surgery after getting cellulitis from a small sore. Then in early winter, her run chair malfunctioned causing her to tip over while travelling at 20km/h, which exacerbated an existing wrist injury.
“Now I’m trying to focus on my day-to-day training to get that improvement back again,” she says.
The Newcastle woman, now 32, has faced even more challenging setbacks, not least the terrifying crash that changed her life in 2017. She remembers the day vividly.
DEVASTATING WORDS
“We had been riding for a while and it was just a last twominute effort,” Lauren recalls. “Both tyres burst and I went flying at 45 kilometres per hour.”
She suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs, shoulder blade and pelvis, and also damaged her spinal cord.
“I was told I would never walk again. Obviously the words coming out of the doctor’s mouth were the most devastating of my life,” she says.
Lauren chose to remain positive, even though she still suffers horrific pain from her chest down, a symptom of her paraplegia. “Sometimes it feels like being stabbed with needles, other times it feels like you are being cut up by a chainsaw,’’ she
says. “Training is the only thing that works in getting my mind off the pain. It is relentless.’’
But so is Lauren’s grit and determination. Despite the pandemic stopping many local competitions, this year she managed to win two events, in Newcastle and Tasmania.
‘Training is the only thing that gets my mind off the pain’
And after Tokyo, she’s hoping to head to the famous Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.
Brad will be by her side the entire time.
“He has been extraordinary. He could not be any more supportive,’’ says Lauren.
“His strength and positivity is the reason I am where I am.’’
But it is Lauren’s incredible mindset that will hopefully lead her to Paralympic gold. “I visualise my race and transitions and, of course, crossing the line in first place! It will be a very special moment if it happens.”