Zahra Nemati

Zahra Nemati grew up in Kerman in south-east Iran and was a promising taekwondo fighter with a black belt by her teens. In 2003, when she was 18, she was in a car accident that damaged her spine and left her unable to walk. She spent a long time in hospital and longer coming to terms with what had happened, and has said she felt she had lost the whole future she had planned.

A few years later she was persuaded to try archery. It suited her: it rewarded stillness and concentration, and it could be shot from a wheelchair alongside able-bodied competitors. She improved quickly, and in London in 2012 she won the Paralympic recurve title, the first Iranian woman to win gold at either the Olympics or the Paralympics. In a country where women's sport gets little attention, this was noticed.

In 2016 she qualified for the Rio Olympics as well as the Paralympics. She was chosen to carry Iran's flag at the Olympic opening ceremony, then went on to defend her Paralympic title a few weeks later. In Tokyo in 2021 she won a third consecutive Paralympic gold.

She has campaigned for disabled people and for women's sport in Iran, and has said the crash gave her a different life rather than a smaller one.