Kurt Fearnley

Kurt Fearnley was born with sacral agenesis, missing the lower portion of his spine, in Carcoar, a town of a few hundred people in rural New South Wales. His family treated him like his four siblings. He got around by crawling, scrambled up trees and played rugby league with the local boys on his hands, with a friend shoving him about the field. He did not get a proper wheelchair until he was a teenager.

He saw wheelchair racing at 14 and knew immediately he wanted to do it. At his first Paralympics in Sydney in 2000 he won two silvers. In Athens in 2004 he won the 5000 metres and the marathon, and in Beijing he won the marathon again. He went on to win the New York Marathon five times and the London, Chicago and Paris marathons as well.

In 2009 he took on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, 96 kilometres of mud, roots and steep jungle where Australian soldiers had fought in 1942. He crawled it in 11 days, wearing through several pairs of gloves and protective gear, to raise money for men's health charities.

He was chosen to carry the Australian flag at the closing ceremony of the Rio Paralympics in 2016, and ended his career with a gold in the marathon at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, cheered home by a crowd he described as the loudest he had heard. He has since chaired the Australian Sports Commission.