Ryley Batt

Ryley Batt was born in Port Macquarie in New South Wales without legs and with fingers that were partly fused. As a child he refused to use a wheelchair, which he thought would mark him out, and got around town on a skateboard, riding with the other kids and pushing himself along with his hands. He was 12 when a wheelchair rugby demonstration came to his school. He did not want to get in the chair. When he finally did, he found the game was fast and violent and he was better at it than anyone else in the room.

Wheelchair rugby, which used to be called murderball, is played by athletes with impairments in all four limbs, in chairs built to take collisions. Batt's unusual strength and the way his body sat low in the chair made him almost impossible to stop. He was picked for Australia at 15 and played at the Athens Paralympics in 2004, the youngest in the tournament.

Australia won silver in Beijing in 2008 and then, with Batt at the centre of everything, gold in London in 2012 and again in Rio in 2016. He has been named the best player in the world repeatedly and captained his country at later Games.

He has said the skateboard years, which his parents allowed rather than fought, gave him the upper body that made him what he is.