Madison de Rozario is a dual Paralympic Champion, winning Gold at the Tokyo Paralympics in the T54 800m and Wheelchair Marathon.
Tokyo was Madison's fourth Paralympic Games, and she adds the two gold and a bronze in the 1500m to her three silver medals from Beijing and Rio.
At her Commonwealth Games debut on the Gold Coast in 2018, she put the world on notice in the women’s 1500m T54 final, launching a decisive attack with 300m to go to win gold, before pushing to a 13-second lead in the women’s marathon T54 to make it two from two.
Over the following six weeks, Madison became the first Australian to win the elite women’s wheelchair race at the London Marathon, and collected a hat-trick of gold medals at the World Para-athletics Grand Prix in Nottwil, Switzerland, where she equalled the women’s 1500m T53/54 world record set by Tatyana McFadden (USA).
Madison, who was first encouraged to begin wheelchair racing by Australian Paralympic Hall of Fame inductee Frank Ponta, made her Paralympic debut more than 13 years ago as the youngest athlete on the Australian Paralympic Team.
Madison trains under esteemed wheelchair racer and Australian Paralympic Hall of Fame inductee Louise Sauvage.
Madison is an advocate for people with a disability and is hopeful that the increased profile of the Paralympics can help address the stigma of disability, telling Elle magazine in 2018. “I don’t want people watching the Paralympics, [just] thinking a person with a disability can race a marathon,” she says. “It’s [that] a person [with] that disability is capable of anything and everything that they choose to do. We need our 20% of Australians [with disabilities], 15% globally … to see that. And then you need the other 85% to also see that. Pathways aren’t created by the minority, right? They’re created by the majority.
“We need that part of our community creating those pathways and seeing the potential, not just in sport, in absolutely everything. Paralympics – because of its profile, because of its platform – has the ability to change perceptions, and create a space where we can make a more accessible world.”
