Francis Ettore Ponta was an Australian Paralympic competitor and coach. He competed in several sports including basketball, pentathlon, swimming and fencing. A paraplegic, he lost the use of both his legs after a tumour was removed from his spinal column when he was a teenager. Ponta was a member of Australia's first national wheelchair basketball team, and is credited with expanding the sport of wheelchair basketball in Western Australia. At the end of his competitive career, he became a coach, working with athletes such as Louise Sauvage, Priya Cooper, Madison de Rozario, Bruce Wallrodt and Bryan Stitfall. He died on 1 June 2011 at the age of 75 after a long illness.
Australia competed at the 1968 Summer Paralympics in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Games significantly expanded in 1968 when compared to previous years, as did the Australian team and the events included in the Games. Mexico City were originally to host the 1968 Paralympics, however, they were moved to Tel Aviv in Israel.
Jamaica was one of twenty-eight nations that competed at the 1968 Summer Paralympics in Tel Aviv, Israel from November 4 to 13, 1968. The team finished fourteenth in the medal table and won a total of five medals; three gold, one silver and one bronze. Eleven athletes represented Jamaica at the Games; seven men and four women.
Spain was one of twenty-eight nations that competed at the 1968 Summer Paralympics in Tel Aviv, Israel from November 4 to 13, 1968. The team finished twenty-first in the medal table and won four medals: three silver and one bronze, all in swimming events. The Spanish team contained eleven athletes; nine men and two women.
William "Bill" Edgar Mather-Brown is an Australian Paralympian.
Daphne Jean Hilton was an Australian Paralympic competitor. She was the first Australian woman to compete at the Paralympic Games. She won fourteen medals in three Paralympics in archery, athletics, fencing, swimming, and table tennis from 1960 to 1968.
Ross Edward Sutton was the first Australian Paralympic gold medallist. He represented Australia in archery at the 1960 Summer Paralympics in Rome, Italy and dartchery and fencing at the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Perth, Western Australia. Sutton also competed in table tennis at the Second National Paraplegic Games.
Elizabeth Mary Edmondson PLY is an Australian Paralympic competitor and current Australian Masters competitor in swimming. She became a paraplegic after contracting polio as a small child. She won several medals in the 1964 and 1968 Summer Paralympics. She subsequently retired from swimming, only taking up the sport again in 2006 to compete in the 2008 FINA World Masters Championships in Perth.
Michael Dow is an Australian Paralympic swimmer and weightlifter who won two gold, two silver and a bronze medal at the 1964 Summer Paralympics. He was one of only two Victorian athletes selected to compete at these games.
Gary Leslie Hooper, MBE is an Australian Paralympic competitor. He won seven medals at three Paralympics from 1960 to 1968.
Lorraine McCoulough-Fry was an Australian Paralympic swimmer, athlete and table tennis player.
Also known as the 13th Stoke Mandeville Games, the 1964 Summer Paralympics was the 2nd Paralympic Games. Hosted in Tokyo, the games ran from 8 to 12 November. Australia won a total of 30 medals and finished fourth on the medal tally behind Italy (3rd), Great Britain (2nd) and the United States (1st). Australia competed in 6 of the 9 sports at the Games, winning medals in each of those sports, but was most successful in the pool, winning a majority of their medals in swimming events.
The Commonwealth Paraplegic Games were an international, multi-sport event involving athletes with a disability from the Commonwealth countries. The event was sometimes referred to as the Paraplegic Empire Games and British Commonwealth Paraplegic Games. Athletes were generally those with spinal injuries or polio. The Games were an important milestone in the Paralympic sports movement as they began the decline of the Stoke Mandeville Games' dominating influence. The event was first held in 1962 and disestablished in 1974. The Games were held in the country hosting the Commonwealth Games for able-bodied athletes, a tradition eventually fully adopted by the larger Olympic and Paralympic movements.
The First Commonwealth Paraplegic Games were held in Perth, Western Australia, from 10 to 17 November 1962. These Games preceded the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games which were held in Perth from 22 November to 1 December of that year. The Commonwealth Paraplegic Games were conceived by George Bedbrook after Perth won the right to host the Commonwealth Games. Great support was received from Royal Perth Hospital, a leading spinal rehabilitation centre in Australia.
At the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Perth, Western Australia eighty nine athletes from nine countries competed in fourteen events.
Margaret Winifred Ross, OAM is an Australian Paralympic archer. At the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Perth, she won a silver medal in the Women's Swimming 50 m Crawl Class E event and bronze medals in the Women's Shot Put Class D and Women's Swimming 50 m Breaststroke Class E events.
Bruce Oliver Thwaite was an Australian Paralympic competitor. During World War II, he sustained a spinal injury when he landed on a tree after parachuting from a bomber plane over Germany. He was treated at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
Alan Yeomans was an Australian jockey, horse racing trainer and swimmer. He began working with horses at the age of 17 and rode over 200 winners in his short career as a jockey. Yeomans became a paraplegic at the age of 21 due to a horse racing accident and took up swimming as part of his rehabilitation, winning three medals at the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Perth. In 1967, he became the first licensed paraplegic horse trainer in Australia, and worked in that profession until 1997. He died in 2004 at the age of 66.
Cheryl Ann "Cherrie" Dallas-Smith, MBE is an Australian former wheelchair athlete, swimmer and table tennis player who represented her country at two Paralympic Games and two Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Darwin, She was on holiday in Melbourne when she was paralysed by polio at the age of five. Her family moved to Brisbane and she became involved in competitive sport through the Queensland Sports and Social Club for the Disabled.
The second Commonwealth Paraplegic Games were held in Kingston, Jamaica from 14 to 20 August 1966. There were 133 athletes from 10 countries. The Games were opened by Prince Philip.
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