Last night I was inducted into the Griffith University Sports College Sporting Hall of Fame.
All the more incredibly honoured to be inducted given the alumni of hashtag#GriffithUniversity boast 55 Olympians, 10 Paralympian and 60 Commonwealth Games athletes.
Event MC Duncan Free OAM ask me to recall a moment from that Gold medal day at the Rio 2016 Paralympics.
I shared the moment when I was at the start line, surrounded by 9 other of the world’s best female athletes who were blind or had low vision, and there was this enormous sense of camaraderie and privilege to be amoung these women.
We were to be the first ever female triathlon race held at the Paralympics for athletes with Vision Impairment.
Mostly though I felt undoubtedly a strength when you have your peer beside you, and the knowing that you are all collectively changing the narrative that we can’t or wouldn’t achieve our own exceptional and aspirational heights.
Thanks to the leadership of people like hashtag#TriathlonAustralia CEO at the time Anne Gripper and World Triathlon Triathlon President Marisol Casado who lobbied for Para-triathlon to be part of the Paralympics.
These women played their part in challenging ableist mindsets to say that disability isn’t the problem, it’s all of us, in our communities to enable pathways for everyone’s participation, and in this instance it was about enabling access to a high performance pathway for triathletes with disability.
Thank you Naomi McCarthy , Duncan Free and all at the Griffith University Sports College for your genuine care and commitment of athletes during their academic studies.
A huge congratulations to all of the athletes and especially the Overall Sport Achievement and Academic Athlete of the year Cassiel Rousseau (Diving) and Jessica Fox (Canoe) respectively.
And, to my fellow Hall of Fame inductees Shannon Parry OAM OLY and Michael Shelley, it was an honour to be named along you both.
Inclusive Futures: Reimagining Disability Sport Access Foundation Australian Sporting Alliance for People with a Disability (ASAPD)
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