13/10/00
The Paralympics
Summary:
The Paralympic Games are about to get underway in Sydney, embracing 18 ports and athletes from 125 countries. RONNIE HOFFMAN details their beginnings, just after the Second World War, at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England.
In 1960, the Stoke Mandeville Games became the Paralympic Games. President of the International Paralympic Committee, ROBERT STEADWARD, discusses how the focus has shifted over the past 40 years, from rehabilitation to sporting excellence.
Shot putter HAMISH MacDONALD, along with TRACY LAWRENCE from the Australian Paralympic Committee and PETER DOWNS from the Disability Education Unit of the Australian Sports Commission, examine the role of the Paralympics in shifting public perceptions about people with disabilites.
And tennis champ DANIELA DI TORO talks about her relationship with her wheelchair.
Details or Transcript:
THEME
Amanda Smith: Just when you thought it was safe to be grumpy and cynical again, now the Olympics are over, here come the Paralympics.
And the Paralympics are a pretty big deal these days; from next Wednesday, when the Games open, Sydney will host 4,000 athletes from 125 countries. And later on The Sports Factor, I’ll be speaking with a couple of Australian Paralympic hopefuls, as well as Robert Steadward, who’s the President of the International Paralympic Committee.
Now, the beginnings of the Paralympic Games were a humble affair, to say the least. They grew out of something called the Stoke Mandeville Games, which were first held on the front lawn of a hospital in England, in the years following the Second World War.
In 1944, a neurosurgeon called Ludwig Guttmann had been put in charge of the Spinal Injuries Unit at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England, which at that time was full of Spitfire pilots and the like, who’d been shot down and copped terrible spine injuries. Ludwig Guttmann was a German Jew who’d fled his home country. And at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, he treated his patients in a way that completely contradicted accepted British medical practice. As Ronnie Hoffman, a writer who’s researched Guttmann and the Stoke Mandeville Games, explains.
Ronnie Hoffman: Basically it was a fairly lousy job, because spinal injuries were at that time seen as the no-hopers. There seemed to be two ways to treat people like that; neither were successful. The first way was to try and do some surgical repair to the nerves of the spinal cord, and no-one was very good at that because they wouldn’t repair. And the other one was basically a write-off. They used to keep them immobile and the poor souls used to rot away, literally, sepsis and infection, and inactivity and they usually didn’t last for more than about five or six months.
Amanda Smith: All right, so what did he do? What was Ludwig Guttmann’s approach to his patients, these young men (presumably they were mostly young men) ex-servicemen with broken spines.
Ronnie Hoffman: Most of them were that, yes. Anything from Spitfire pilots to people who had been in tanks that blew up, Naval personnel. They weren’t all men by the way, there were quite a number of women there involved as well. Anyway, Guttmann decided they couldn’t be treated surgically, they couldn’t be written off, so he decided basically to manage them. Manage, by the way, as in rehabilitate. Firstly with all sorts of activities. For example, he saw the enormous septic bedsores that developed when people lay very still, because they couldn’t move, so he had the nurses literally turn them over, night and day, every couple of hours. He had lots of physiotherapy; he got them moving a little bit. Even though again, the Establishment said ‘No, you mustn’t do that; people with broken spines mustn’t be moved, they’ll fall in half.’ He proved that that wasn’t true.
He also at the same time, wanted to motivate them, and that’s where he was very good. He motivated people all around him, the people who worked with him and the patients. He used to tell them, ‘I want to turn you into a taxpayer’. And that was great for their morale. Instead of being left in a quiet corner of the word to sort of rot away and die, they would become a contributor to society and not a receiver. And he used to chivvy them and say, ‘Right, you’re going to be a taxpayer soon!’ He introduced the element of competition because again, they were young people, they had been involved in competition, and they were getting up to all sorts of things, throwing paper balls at each other, darts competitions, anything at all.
Amanda Smith: So how did Guttmann develop this radical idea at the time, that these war veterans might live rather than die if they were physically active, and physically active through wheelchair sports?
Ronnie Hoffman: He started off with a thing called the Stoke Mandeville Games just after the war, in 1948. That was the official start. There had been a certain amount of messing around before that. There was a local organisation called the Star and Garter Home, where other ex-service personnel were, and they put together these two teams, there were about 16 people, I think 14 ex-servicemen and a couple of ex-servicewomen, to compete at archery and throwing the javelin, and that was it. 1948 it started.
1949 there were five teams, including some expatriate Poles from a Polish nursing home. And by 1950, according to the official records, 14 teams were competing, with 60 competitors. It had caught on. Everybody’s spinal unit wanted to be part of this. And that’s when it went on. By 1952, two years later, the international games were there. There were in fact, in the international games, four Dutch ex-servicemen. One of the Dutch doctors knew Guttmann from old times, had been interested in his work, had come over and said ‘Can we send over next time you’re having a Games, we’ll make it an international Games?’ So literally, four Dutchmen turned up, beds were hastily set up in a disused Nissen hut on the site. Oddly enough, they were set up by Margaret Noble, who was one of the volunteers who worked with Guttmann at the time and who now lives in a retirement home, would you believe, just outside of Gosford. She remembers setting up half a dozen beds for these guys and their minders, and they arrived in their wheelchairs on a military transport plane I think, and in 1952 the first international Stoke Mandeville Games.
But this competition was the important thing. People wanted to get out and compete, prove their worth to themselves, prove their worth to the world, and it sort of motivated all the other activities as well.
Amanda Smith: How radical was Ludwig Guttmann in this approach to his patients, in getting these young men and women with broken spines to play sport?
Ronnie Hoffman: I don’t know, I’m not a medical specialist by any manner of means. But he seems to me to be flying in the face of conventional thinking. They really did believe you mustn’t do this, and thou shalt not do that, and they didn’t have an answer, but they knew his answer was wrong. He was in fact suffering from all sorts of difficulties because he kept asking for things, like physiotherapists and carpenter treaters and special wheelchairs that weren’t quite as big and heavy and old, so that they could compete in them and play ball games. And he was pretty starved of funds.
Amanda Smith: And at what point then was he vindicated? When did the medical Establishment get behind this approach?
Ronnie Hoffman: It was by the mid-‘50s. In ’53 a Canadian team came over and they were full of praise for him. In 1954 there were 14 nations represented, including an Australian team by the way, for the first time. So this was in the early 1950s. People couldn’t ignore the fact that Ludwig Guttmann’s patients were not leaving in coffins, they were leaving to go out and get jobs. And very, very slowly a certain amount of funding and a certain amount of acceptance of his methods was proved, because you couldn’t ignore the fact that guys were leaving and going out and making their way in the world.
Amanda Smith: Ronnie Hoffman, and the extraordinary story of how the Paralympic Games began.
The first time they were actually called the Paralympics was in 1960, in Rome. And in the 40 years since then, the idea of sport for people with disabilities being about rehabilitation, the medical model, has shifted to more of a sports model. In other words, Paralympians are, first and foremost, elite athletes.
Dr Robert Steadward is the President of the International Paralympic Committee, and as of last month, also a member of the International Olympic Committee. But are there still misconceptions about Paralympic sport, even with this sort of recognition?
Robert Steadward: Yes, we have come a long way, but there are still many, many questions that people from around the world are asking about the Paralympic movement, there’s still not enough education and awareness there generally about our sports, our athletes and our Paralympic events. So that’s going to be an ongoing challenge.
Amanda Smith: Well I was interested in these just past Olympic Games, that there was a runner in the final of the women’s 1500 metres event, Marla Runyan from the USA who’s a former, as you would know, Paralympic champion. She has a vision impairment and as I understand it, she was the first legally blind athlete to compete in the Olympic Games. Was there any official resistance to her doing so?
Robert Steadward: None whatsoever. Now in this particular case of course, we’re dealing with a really difficult classification and a philosophical matter here. Historically the athletes with visual impairments and blindness were classified as either B1, B2, B3, depending on the level of blindness. And there’s always been that question throughout our movement about where do the minimal disability athletes belong. Some people say that they’re not disabled enough to participate in the Paralympics and that their disability is too severe for them to compete equally in the Olympic Games. So there’s always those grey matters, and in her case, being a B3, certainly visually impaired and certainly legally blind, because of the sport, the 1500 metres, she’s able to run that race likely without really any kind of impediments that would distract her from really meeting her maximum potential.
Amanda Smith: Now with the Paralympics, with the move that’s taken place over several years to take the focus off rehabilitation and on to athleticism, is there now a danger of taking on some of the worst aspects of the dominant sports culture of able-bodied sport? I mean I’m talking I guess about drugs, I’m talking about a win-at-all-costs mentality.
Robert Steadward: Yes, Amanda, there’s always that danger. And absolutely, we’ve experienced that, we’re not that naïve to say that we haven’t, we’ve had our athletes who have tested positive for drugs, and some have learnt some very difficult lessons. You may remember back in ’92 I had to take all the Gold medals away from the American wheelchair basketball team because one of the athletes had tested positive for a very highly addictive pseudo-opiate, so those kind of things happen, and thankfully at the present time in our movement, even though some of our athletes in some sports are making significant amounts of money through winnings, endorsements and sponsorships, it’s certainly right now kept at a minimum.
Amanda Smith: What does your appointment to the IOC now mean for disabled sports? I ask that because on the one hand it could be seen as serious acknowledgement. But on the other hand, it’s membership of a somewhat discredited organisation.
Robert Steadward: Well I think again that we have to look at perceptions too. I mean you say that it might be a discredited organisation. Having been on the outside looking in, and now on the inside looking in, I look at it quite differently. I see some great changes and I remember when I was elected during the Olympic Games here just three or four weeks ago now, and President Samaranch presented me with my Gold membership medal, he said ‘This is a very special historical moment. You know, it further says that our two movements now have a much closer relationship and we’re prepared to work together for the betterment of all people in the world, and all athletes.’
Amanda Smith: Dr Robert Steadward, who’s the President of the International Paralympic Committee. And now, an IOC member as well.
Well the Australian Paralympic team was fabulously successful in Atlanta in 1996. And there’s every expectation that they will be again over the next couple of weeks in Sydney. But further to what Robert Steadward was saying, in what ways do athletes with disabilities still want to shift public attitudes?
Hamish MacDonald is a shot-putter, an Atlanta Gold Medallist, and Sydney Paralympics competitor. Tracy Lawrence is a high performance manager with the Australian Paralympic Committee, and Peter Downs runs the Disability Education Unit of the Australian Sports Commission. Now of course all sorts of people play sport for all sorts of reasons. But is there still this lingering perception that Paralympic athletes play sport primarily for therapy? Peter Downs.
Peter Downs: The answer is yes and no. I think probably in some quarters yes, it still is the case, that it’s seen as some kind of corrective therapy or rehabilitation, and that’s really the background of the Paralympic Games, it came from that time when sport was seen as a means of rehabilitation and therapy for people with disabilities. Certainly at the elite level, it’s not that at all, it’s entirely a sport focus, which is something quite, not unique to Australia, but something Australia is particularly good at. But I think at the lower levels, maybe at the community level and at the club level, there still is a perception that people with disabilities participate in sport and physical activity for reasons other than what the rest of society do, for enjoyment, for fun, for social interaction, that is some kind of therapy or rehabilitation. I still think that myth persists in Australia.
Amanda Smith: Well Tracy, is sport actually a useful mechanism for shifting some of those broader community attitudes about people with disabilities?
Tracy Lawrence: Yes I think it definitely is. I think when people see athletes with disabilities performing with distinction in the international arena, they then start to look at the whole area a little bit differently. And when a coach is involved with an athlete by accident almost, at a State level or at a club level, they suddenly find themselves working with somebody with an intellectual disability or a physical disability or whatever it may be, and that suddenly changes their entire perception of all people with disabilities. They think well maybe it’s not quite the same as the way I used to see it, or you might have a wheelchair rugby team together, and people would assume that every able-bodied person surrounding them is a nurse, straightaway, whereas it’s not, it’s coaches, it’s mechanics, and physiotherapists, just like you’d have with a mainstream team.
Amanda Smith: Well Hamish, often in the media coverage of Paralympic athletes for example, the focus is on these people being courageous individuals, which kind of implies ‘There by the Grace of God go I’ rather than being skilled athletes. Is that an issue for you?
Hamish MacDonald: Yes it’s a huge issue actually. Many of the athletes feel the same way, particularly at the Paralympic level; it’s about elite sport, it’s about people who’ve been training for years and years, the same as our able-bodied counterparts, to get into the position that they’re in. So it’s nothing about being courageous or special or unusual, and I think that’s a perception that a lot of the athletes would like to get rid of. And the way that we do that is to try and expose as many people to sport for people with disabilities, whether it be at local club, State or international levels. It’s not about getting out and having a go, it’s not about people trying to be overly courageous or anything like that. People have made a conscious decision to get involved in sport the same as Michael Klim or Matthew Dunn have made a conscious decision to become a swimmer, and in getting to the level that they’ve gotten to, they’ve had to put in the same amount of training hours, the same amount of commitment. And so have the people around them. So we’d really like to get rid of that tag of being special or courageous or something like that.
Peter Downs: It comes from the old charity model.
Hamish MacDonald: It does, yes. And I think as the national sporting organisations take on the role of providing opportunities for people with disabilities and we’re more aligned with what happens within the mainstream, I think people will slowly get rid of that tag, and obviously as the public gets exposed to sport for people with disabilities at all levels, they get a better understanding of the types of people that participate. But I think as with able-bodied people, there are people who participate in sport for fun and enjoyment, and there are people with disabilities who participate in sport for fun and enjoyment, and then there are people who participate in sport for people with disabilities to reach the elite level, and those sort of people are the same as anyone within the mainstream.
Amanda Smith: And yet Hamish, would you for example, a newspaper story about you, would you prefer that it didn’t mention at all your cerebral palsy? Because it seems to me that dealing with that is part of your experience as an athlete, isn’t it? It’s part of your story.
Hamish MacDonald: Yes I guess it is. I think that obviously by virtue of the fact that I’m involved in the Paralympic Games there has to be a reason for that, and that reason is my disability. And that obviously needs to be mentioned somewhere along the way, but I think that generally the stories are painted as pictures of, as you said, courageousness, or overcoming unusual barriers or something like that. But if the stories could be painted as a picture of someone who’s good at what they do because they’re passionate about what they do, and they’ve taken an interest in it, and it’s taken several years to develop, then I think people would be equally interested in that, and probably more so than the old story of being courageous and being special.
Amanda Smith: Tracy, where do you see what’s happening in Australia as far as the inclusion and recognition of athletes with disabilities in relation to other parts of the world?
Tracy Lawrence: Well I think we seem to have quite a similar model to, say, Canada, who are also looking at inclusion. In the bigger countries like the USA it just seems, I mean people try to participate in their local clubs, but at the elite level which is mostly what I’ve been involved in, it’s very separate. They come out here and they see the types of involvement we have with mainstream sport and they’re usually blown away. And I think that that will always give Australia the edge. I know after Atlanta, other countries were looking at the model and saying, ‘Well Australia is a relatively small country populationwise, why are they doing so well in Paralympic sport?’ and started to look at the models. Now they’re obviously going to pick up on what works for them in their country and use it, so we have to always be looking for that edge again, to make sure that we don’t just get a little bit relaxed.
The only other thing I’d like to add is that we’re involving coaches who come from the mainstream model, so the coaches that we’re involving in our sports are well respected mainstream coaches, so they could coach at elite level in able-bodied sport, or they can coach in elite level in Paralympic sport, and they have chosen to coach in Paralympic sport, and because of that, a) the athletes are getting top class coaching, which is very important; and b) the mainstream or generic sports, are seeing these top level coaches coaching athletes with disabilities and thinking, ‘Well, if they can coach them, they’re obviously elite athletes.’ So that will change the perception over time when you’ve got your Chris Nunns and Bob Turners and so on involved, Matt Brown, you know they’re all well respected coaches in their own sports.
Amanda Smith: Well Peter just finally, I suspect that one of the underlying issues is about intentions versus reality. I mean I imagine that nobody (apart perhaps from Arthur Tunstall) is going to criticise an inclusive approach to sport, but actually acting on it may be another matter.
Peter Downs: Entirely, yes, exactly right.
Amanda Smith: How much are you facing that?
Peter Downs: The Disability Education Program attempts to do that, that’s just one of the national initiatives in the area, and there are a number of other States and local initiatives too. Most of sport, most of physical activity is designed by able-bodied people for able-bodied people, and to include someone with a disability in that may need some changes. That can mean the change in the colour of a ball, it may be that simple. Or it may mean a complete revamp of the program. So there’s no one solution, there’s no easy answer to it, but it is a question of attitude and education, and that’s what certainly in our program at the Australian Sports Commission, the Active Australia Disability Education Program, attempts to do is to try and educate and influence attitudes towards people with disabilities being included into regular activity. Now in the face of it, it sounds really quite simple, but attitudes don’t change overnight and a little workshop here and there can’t change attitudes significantly. But over time, what we hope is that we can influence people’s thinking to say, ‘Yes most of physical activity in sport is exclusive in nature, does not include people with disabilities. So what do we have to do to it? What do we have to change about it, even if it is simple like a change of a colour of a ball, to make it inclusive of all people?’ And so that we don’t actually call it an inclusive program any more, we don’t call it adapted program any more, it’s just a regular activity. While we call it something different to a regular activity, then it’s non-inclusive. By nature it has to be exclusive if we call it something different.
Amanda Smith: Peter Downs, from the Disability Education Unit of the Australian Sports Commission, along with Tracy Lawrence, High Performance Manager with the Australian Paralympic Committee, and shot-putter and Paralympian Hamish MacDonald.
Daniela di Toro is another Australian Paralympian. She’s a tennis player, currently ranked Number 2 in the world in wheelchair tennis. Daniela was ranked Number 1 last year, but she dropped to Number 2 after she was knocked out of the Sydney International Wheelchair Tennis Open in January this year, by the Dutch player Djoke van Marum. In fact it’s the Dutch who dominate International Wheelchair Tennis. Apart from Daniela di Toro, the other five top female players are all Dutch.
Daniela di Toro: Yes, absolutely, the top girls are Dutch. You know, so they’re hot on my heels but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to pull them off.
Amanda Smith: So what’s the nature of your disability, Daniela?
Daniela di Toro: I’m actually a paraplegic at T12L1, so basically my break is at the T12 level.
Amanda Smith: What does that mean?
Daniela di Toro: That’s just the position along the spine that your break is, so it’s like the thorax.
Amanda Smith: Where and how did that happen?
Daniela di Toro: In 1988 I was at a swimming carnival and a brick wall fell and landed on my back.
Amanda Smith: Was this the school incident in Doveton in Victoria?
Daniela di Toro: Yes, that’s the one actually, it was in Dandenong in 1988.
Amanda Smith: Yes, I do remember that, because there were quite a few people injured in that weren’t there?
Daniela di Toro: Yes there was my whole year level, so of 130-odd kids, there was about 20 that got hurt. But obviously none quite as severe as I was, which is very lucky.
Amanda Smith: Were you playing tennis before that?
Daniela di Toro: Yes, played a little bit, just a little local stuff you know. I mean I wasn’t going to be Steffie Graf or anything like that, but I did it, I enjoyed it, and I was relatively OK at it, but it certainly wasn’t going to become a profession or anything like that.
Amanda Smith: Well from your observation, is there a difference between people who’ve played tennis able-bodied and then switched to wheelchair tennis after an injury, such as yourself, or those who’ve learnt in the chair?
Daniela di Toro: I think there’s a huge difference. Quite frankly it makes it a lot easier if you’ve played before. I mean my shots haven’t changed a whole lot; the technique is there, I learnt that when I was nine years old, so for me that’s just been a natural progression. But for someone who’s just been in a chair, never played tennis before, I mean it means not only do you have to learn the technique and the skill, but you also have to learn mobility on court, which makes it quite hard.
Amanda Smith: All right, so what’s the difference if there is any, in the rules between wheelchair tennis and able-bodied tennis?
Daniela di Toro: None to speak of really, except that we have the option of having two bounces, which you don’t really take. I mean the better player you are, the less you’re going to use that two-bounce option.
Amanda Smith: Yes, because I certainly noticed while you were having a hit with your coach that you were rarely letting it bounce twice, so is that giving you an advantage? You’re constantly trying to get it on the first bounce, are you?
Daniela di Toro: Yes, precisely. I mean it gives you huge advantages; not only are you getting to the ball earlier but you’re I guess opening up a lot of the court for the other player, so if you can get them out of position, then you’ve got your chances of winning that point a lot quicker and a lot easier.
Amanda Smith: Is it tactically a different game?
Daniela di Toro: From able-bodied? Definitely. Because I mean mobility is so much an aspect that you can take advantage of. So there’s going to be quite a few players who are a fair bit slower, or maybe their breaks are higher, so their balance isn’t quite as good. So you’re always trying to exploit that. It’s a lot more of thinking in that game than able-bodied. I mean able-bodied there’s a lot of power involved and you can get away with a lot of power. But here it’s really a thinking game more than anything.
Amanda Smith: Tell me about your chair. This is, I presume a special wheelchair tennis chair.
Daniela di Toro: Yes, my chair is specifically designed for tennis, you can’t really take it anywhere else, it’s incredibly low, the wheels are incredibly angled, so you can’t fit anywhere. It’s incredibly light, moves very quickly and yes, as I said, it’s just specific to tennis.
Amanda Smith: Do you feel like you have a kind of relationship with the chair?
Daniela di Toro: Oh you have to. If you feel like there isn’t one and there’s something wrong, I mean you’ve got to see the chair as a part of your whole body, so it’s like if it’s feeling a little bit different or feeling a bit off, then you’ve got to start making it become that part of you, because that’s exactly what it is; it’s just like an extension to your legs or whatever, so you’ve got to make that, and become one with that, yes.
Amanda Smith: Well how do you do that, if as you say you feel like that’s not happening, what do you do?
Daniela di Toro: A lot of it is actually in the design of the chair, because all of it is specific to me, so you know, my height and all kinds of stuff. It’s definitely about positioning, and also just trying to get strapped into your chair, so that the second you move, the chair also moves with you, but if it’s not working then you need to look at how your chair is actually set up.
Amanda Smith: Now I notice when you were having a session with your coach, he’s not in a chair, so he’s obviously hitting the ball at a different angle to you. Does that mean that you then have to make an adjustment from how you’re hitting up with your coach, to how you’re playing with another player?
Daniela di Toro: Yes, that’s a really good question, and often that can be a problem. But Rob’s quite good, he’s watched a lot of tennis, so he’s actually hitting quite similar to how I hit and to most of the wheelchair players. Like if you watch him train with any of the able-bods, he’ll be hitting totally differently to what he hits with me. But it’s good, because what he’ll do with me is mix it up a lot, so I don’t get stuck into one particular pattern of play. So really it’s good for me, it makes me work a lot harder and makes me think a lot more, and thinking all the time.
Amanda Smith: Well would you like to see the Paralympics one day fully integrated into the Olympic program?
Daniela di Toro: I’m not even sure if that is kind of possible. I mean the Paralympics itself is such a huge thing, there are so many participants, so many people are going to be there, so I’d hate to be in the Village with twice as many people there. I mean, what we’re trying to do as far as tennis goes, is integrate the whole idea of tennis players in wheelchairs and able-bods, so what we’re doing with that is for example there’s the Ericsson International in Key Biscayne where we’re actually playing at the same venue as the ATP and the WTA tour. So we’re playing at the same time, same place, alongside them. Obviously not in their draw, but it kind of just says ‘Yes, they’re tennis players and they deserve to be there’ and equipment is the only difference.
Amanda Smith: So whereabouts is that tournament?
Daniela di Toro: That’s actually in Florida, USA. It’s one of the few tournaments that they’re actually integrating, but that’s certainly where we want to go with it.
Amanda Smith: What about with for example the Australian Open here at Melbourne Park?
Daniela di Toro: Yes, I mean ideally what we’d be looking at is getting maybe the top eight wheelchair players in the world, the men and women, and putting them into the same thing like playing at the same venue, same time.
Amanda Smith: And that’s Daniela di Toro, who’ll be representing Australia in the wheelchair tennis singles and doubles at the Sydney Paralympics. And maybe one day at the Australian Open at Melbourne Park as well.
ABC-TV will be screening the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympics next Wednesday night, and then highlights from the competition as it proceeds through to the end of the month.
Thanks for your company on The Sports Factor. Michael Shirrefs produces the show, and I’m Amanda Smith.
Guests on this program:
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Ronnie Hoffman Writer and researcher on the origins of the Paralympic Games. |
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Dr Robert Steadward President of the International Paralympic Committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee. |
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Peter Downs Manager of the Disability Education Unit of the Australian Sports Commission. |
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Tracy Lawrence High Performance Manager with the Australian Paralympic Committee. |
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Hamish MacDonald Australian shot-putter and Paralympian. |
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Daniela di Toro Australian tennis player and Paralympian. |
Presenter:
Amanda Smith
Producer:
Michael Shirrefs
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