Medal winner wanting fourth time at Paralympics
By KIM PALMER
AT the age of 14, Madison de Rozario received an unexpected call up to Australia’s Paralympic team for the Beijing Olympics.
Now living in Sydney Olympic Park and in training with high hopes of going to her fourth games, the 26-year-old says the experience of being the youngest member of the team at that first event, was “kind of surreal”.
“I was a last minute selection for the relay team,” she said.
“My coach and I were working towards London in 2012 and then, there I was walking out into the Birds Nest Stadium with the rest of the Australian team.
“It felt like everything was just parallel to the real world.”
Hoping to add to her tally of three silver Paralympic medals, the wheelchair racer looks on target for Tokyo later this year after winning gold in both the Women’s 1500m T54 final and the T54 Marathon at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in 2018. She is also the reigning women’s 800m T54 world champion.
Inspired by two strong women in her life, she describes her mother Linda as “a powerhouse mum” and her coach, champion retired wheelchair racer and Australian Paralympic Hall of Fame inductee Louise Sauvage, as “paramount” to her success.
However de Rozario admits with a laugh that when it comes to competition, she and her coach have “vastly different” approaches when it comes to racing.
“Louise is very fierce and very competitive, while I’m much more about wanting to be the very best version of myself,” she said.
“But she has completely embraced the person I am and the way I do things. She has really helped shape me.”
