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| Full name | Eric Cyril Russell | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | Australian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 7 January 1944 Maryborough, Queensland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Eric Cyril Russell, MBE [1] (born 7 January 1944) [2] is an Australian Paralympic athlete, coach, and administrator.
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Eric Cyril Russell | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | Australian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 7 January 1944 Maryborough, Queensland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Eric Cyril Russell, MBE [1] (born 7 January 1944) [2] is an Australian Paralympic athlete, coach, and administrator.
Russell was born on 7 January 1944 in the Queensland city of Maryborough. [2] [3] [4] After leaving school, he served an apprenticeship as a boilermaker. [3] He played professional rugby league in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and while there, he sustained a spinal cord injury in a car crash. [3] Russell spent 16 days in hospital in Papua New Guinea. [4] He was then flown to Brisbane, where he underwent rehabilitation for three months, and was inspired to take up sport by athletes training at the spinal injury unit. [3] [4] He has been married to Paralympic athlete and powerlifter Julie Russell since 1979. [3] The pair met in 1977 for the first time when Eric came to Adelaide for the first National Basketball Titles. [4] Eric and Julie were then introduced officially in 1978 at the Regional Games in Broken Hill. [4]
He has been a member of Rotary International since 1985, first joining the Rotary Club of Adelaide, South Australia, and then moving to Adelaide Parks, where he later served as president in 1989. He was the 2011–12 District Governor of District 9500, [3] which covers parts of the Northern Territory (including Alice Springs) and South Australia (including Adelaide). [3] [5]
Russell's career began in 1972 when he participated in a shot put trial for the National Games that were to be competed in Sydney later that year. He was selected for the Games where he finished with two bronze and one silver medal. [4] He represented Australia at the 1974 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Dunedin, New Zealand. [2] [6]
At the 1976 Toronto Games, he won three gold medals in the Men's Discus 3, Men's Pentathlon 3 and Men's Shot Put 3 events and a silver medal in the Men's Javelin 3 event; [7] he was also part of the Australia men's national wheelchair basketball team at the games. [8] Despite setting a world record in the discus, he rejected the gold medal for that event because of politics being injected into the Games; several national teams had boycotted the competition due to the presence of the South African Paralympic team during the apartheid era, at a time when many sports teams from that country were banned from international competition. Russell said: "We have enough of a common bond in our disabilities without governments bringing politics into it". [9] [10] Following his protest, Russell was ordered to attend a meeting with Kevin Betts and Ludwig Guttmann where he left the meeting in frustration as a result of his issue with the politics associated with the Games. A press conference was then held the next morning where Russell was awarded a medal for the excellence of his protest which he later returned to the lawn bowler from whom it was taken. [4]
At the 1980 Arnhem Games, he won a gold medal in the Men's Shot Put 3 event and two bronze medals in the Men's Discus 3 and Men's Pentathlon 3 events. [7] At the 1992 Barcelona Games, he came seventh in the Men's Javelin THW6 event. [11] Going into the 1992 Games, he had won 26 gold medals at 16 events. [12]
Russell has served in several positions in disabled athletics including as a coach, sport administrator, and sport event director. He was the Chairman of Athletics at the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation from 1978 to 1988. [2] [13] After realising that he had achieved all of his initial goals, Russell resigned from his position as Chairman of Athletics in 1988. [4] He also served as an international Paralympic classifier in athletics. [14] Russell was the inaugural Representative for the South-Pacific Region on the International Paralympic Committee. He resigned from this role in 1993 because of the politics within the sport. [4]
Russell became a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1981 for service to "handicapped sport". [1] In that year, he received an Advance Australia Award. [3] In 2007, he was made a life member of the Wheelchair Sports Association of South Australia. [3] The Eric Russell Male Athlete of the Meet Award, issued by the Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association, is named in Russell's honour; he was the first coordinator and later a state administrator of the organisation. [15]
The 2011 IPC Athletics World Championships was held in Christchurch, New Zealand from January 21 to 30, 2011. Athletes with disabilities competed, and the Championships were a qualifying event for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
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.
Roberto Marson was an Italian multisport athlete who competed at the Summer Paralympics on four occasions and won a total of 26 Paralympic medals. He lost the use of his legs when a pine tree he was chopping down fell on his back.
Australia sent a team to compete at the 1972 Summer Paralympics in Heidelberg, West Germany. Australian won 25 medals - 6 gold, 9 silver, and 10 bronze medals in six sports. Australia finished 11th on the gold medal table and 9th on the total medal table.
Australia has participated in every Summer Paralympic Games since the inception of the Paralympics in the year 1960. The 1976 Paralympic Games in Toronto was Australia's fifth Paralympic Games. Australia competed in 10 out of the 13 sports and were able to win medals in six of these sports. There were 44 athletes representing Australia at the Games with a number of these athletes participating in multiple sports. Of the 44 athletes, 34 were males and 10 were females. As a team, Australia won 41 medals, 16 of which were gold. This placed it just outside the top 10 in 11th position at the end of the Games. The Australian team won more gold medals at the 1976 Paralympic Games than at any of the previous four Paralympic Games. 26 athletes finished on the podium in their respective events. This represents more than half the number of athletes that Australia sent to Toronto. Six world records were broken by Australian athletes on their way to winning their respective events.
Gary Leslie Hooper, MBE is an Australian Paralympic competitor. He won seven medals at three Paralympics from 1960 to 1968.
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.
Australia competed at the 1980 Summer Paralympics in Arnhem, Netherlands. It was the 6th Summer Paralympic Games in which Australia had competed. These Games were the biggest Paralympics yet, with 1,973 people participating. Of those participants, 57 were Australian. The team was made up of 45 men and 12 women, and was Australia's largest team to compete at any Paralympic Games so far.
Australia competed at the 1992 Paralympic Games in Barcelona for physically and vision-impaired athletes. Immediately after the Barcelona Games, the city of Madrid held events for athletes with an intellectual disability. The Madrid results are not included in International Paralympic Committee Historical Results Database. Australia finished 7th in the total medal count winning 76 medals. Australia competed in 13 sports and won medals in 3 sports – swimming, athletics and weightlifting. Australia finished first in the medal tally at the 1992 Paralympic Games for Persons with Mental Handicap in Madrid.
Russell Luke Short, OAM is an Australian legally blind athlete, who has competed at eight Paralympics from 1988 to 2016 and won six gold, two silver and four bronze medals at the Games. He competes in discus, javelin, and shot put.
Bruce Wallrodt, was an Australian Paralympic athlete. He competed at five Paralympic Games and won nine medals, four of them gold.
Damien Alexander Burroughs, is an Australian Paralympic athlete. He won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games and participated in the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Paralympics.
Julie Elizabeth Russell is an Australian Paralympic athlete, powerlifter and wheelchair basketballer.
Ryan Scott, is a Paralympic wheelchair rugby competitor from Australia. In four Paralympics, Scott has won a silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics and gold medals at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Paralympics.
Anton James Flavel, OAM is an Australian athlete with an intellectual disability. He was born in the Western Australian town of Narrogin. In his disability class he held a world record for the javelin and an Australian record in the shot put and high jump.
Susan Marjory "Tracey" Freeman was an Australian Paralympic athlete who won ten medals at two Paralympics.
Victor "Vic" Allen Renalson, MBE was an Australian athlete, weightlifter, and track and field coach. He won ten medals at four Paralympics from 1964 to 1976, and worked as a track and field coach for both Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
Rheed McCracken is an Australian Paralympic athletics competitor. He named the 2012 Junior Athlete of the Year as part of the Australian Paralympian of the Year Awards. He represented Australia at the 2012 London Paralympics, 2016 Rio Paralympics, 2020 Tokyo Paralympics and the 2024 Paris Paralympics, where he won three silver and three bronze medals.
Lindsay Sutton is an Australian track and field athlete who represented Australia at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in athletics.
Akeem Stewart is a Trinidad and Tobago Paralympic athlete with F43 disability classification. He competes in discus throw, javelin throw and shot put events.
