 Hooper receiving Paralympics Australia Pin No. 5, 28 November 2022 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Gary Leslie Hooper | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality |  Australia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 11 February 1939 Sydney, New South Wales | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Gary Leslie Hooper, MBE [1] (born 11 February 1939) is an Australian Paralympic competitor. He won seven medals at three Paralympics from 1960 to 1968.
Hooper was born on 11 February 1939 in Sydney. [2] He never knew his biological father, and lived with his stepfather. [2] He grew up near Newcastle in Toronto. [3]
He contracted polio at the age of eleven, and lost the use of both his legs. [2] At 16, he attended a live-in rehabilitation centre at the former naval base in Jervis Bay, where he learned a range of trade crafts, including metalwork, woodwork and leatherwork. All students at the centre were encouraged to become as physically fit as possible. After the centre was moved to the Mount Wilga Rehabilitation Hospital in Hornsby, Hooper became involved in wheelchair sport competitions and was successful from the outset. [4]
Hooper trained to become a bookbinder and worked for 25 years at the Newcastle Public Library. [5] He volunteered as the welfare officer for the Foundation for the Disabled in Newcastle. [6] He retired from the Newcastle Public Library in April 1983, 25 years to the day after he commenced, due to ill health following several motor vehicle accidents. [7] Later, he also worked as a public speaker and accessibility consultant. [2]
During Hooper's sporting career, athletes contributed significantly to the cost of attending international sporting events. The contribution was often more than could be afforded by individuals and Hooper was the beneficiary of fundraising efforts by his local community. In 1970, the Hamilton Apex Club launched an appeal which raised $1,490 to send Hooper to the Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Edinburgh [8] after efforts by the Swansea-Belmont Surf Club and the Toronto Leagues Club fell short of the required amount and Hooper was about to withdraw from the team. [9] [10]
In 1964 he married Janice, who was a librarian at the Newcastle Public Library. [11] They have two sons. [2] [12]
Throughout his career, Hooper was a prodigious winner of titles at all levels and across a range of sports. At the 1966 New South Wales Paraplegic Championships he won 11 titles in events in athletics, fencing and swimming and also competed in table tennis and snooker. [13] At the 1968 Australian Paraplegic Games he won 14 medals, including 10 gold medals, in athletics, fencing, swimming and weightlifting. [14]
At the 1960 Rome Paralympics, Hooper won a silver medal in the Men's Precision Javelin B event. [15] At the 1964 Tokyo Paralympics, he won a gold medal in the Men's Wheelchair Dash above T10 event and two silver medals in the Men's Wheelchair Relay above T10 and Men's Lightweight weightlifting events; [15] [16] he also competed in swimming and wheelchair fencing at the Games. [15] At the 1968 Tel Aviv Paralympics, he won a gold medal in the Men's 100m Wheelchair A event and two silver medals in the Men's 4x40m Relay open and Men's Shot Put B events; he also competed in swimming, weightlifting, and wheelchair fencing at the Games. [15]
He participated in the 1962, 1966, and 1970 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Perth, Jamaica, and Edinburgh, respectively. [2] At the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games Hooper won 5 gold medals in javelin, precision javelin, club throw shot put and wheelchair basketball, 2 silver medals in breaststroke and weightlifting and 2 bronze medals in the 'Australian crawl' and backstroke swimming events. [17] At the 1966 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games Hooper contested 16 events in total across 5 sports and won 12 medals: gold medals for javelin, club throw, relay, shot put, backstroke; silver in wheelchair sprint, discus sabre teams, basketball and weightlifting; bronze in foils and sabre individual events. [18] At the 1970 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games Hooper won 6 medals in athletics and weightlifting: gold in the precision javelin and 4X100m relay, silver in the 100m, shot put and slalom and bronze in weightlifting. [10] [19]
Hooper retired from competitive sport in 1976 after suffering injuries in a car accident. [7]
He took up lawn bowls in 1988 and aimed for selection as a lawn bowler at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics. [20] However, after being on the Paralympic program since 1968, lawn bowls was not included in 1992.
Hooper was a judge in fencing at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. [2]
Hooper became a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1969 "for achievements at the Paraplegic Games and services to disabled persons". [21] [1]
Hooper carried the Olympic and Paralympic Torches during the respective torch relays for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. [22] [23]
Hooper was inducted into the Hunter Region Sporting Hall of Fame in 2001. [5]
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.
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.
Angela Ballard is an Australian Paralympic athlete who competes in T53 wheelchair sprint events. She became a paraplegic at age 7 due to a car accident.
William "Bill" Edgar Mather-Brown is an Australian Paralympian. He was born in the Western Australian city of Fremantle in 1936. At the age of two, he contracted polio in the town of Agnew in the Goldfields-Esperance region, northeast of Kalgoorlie. He spent two years in Kalgoorlie Hospital before moving back to Perth. He married Nadine Vine, who attended the 1972 Heidelberg Games as a team nurse.
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.
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.
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.
John Martin is an Australian Paralympic archer, athlete, table tennis player, wheelchair basketballer and wheelchair fencer who won three silver medals at five Paralympics. He was born in England and emigrated to Australia with his family at the age of 13.
Eric Boulter is an Australian swimmer, athlete, and wheelchair basketball player who won two medals at the 1972 Heidelberg Paralympics.
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.
Terry Mason is an Australian Paralympic athlete and weightlifter, who won two bronze medals at two Paralympics.
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.
Raymond Barrett was an Indigenous Australian Paralympic athlete left a paraplegic following a car accident. Prior to this he was a champion juvenile athlete in able-bodied sports. A bronze medalist at the 1972 Summer Paralympics Heidelberg Germany, a high achiever at the Stoke Mandeville Games England, Commonwealth Paraplegic Games, National Paraplegic and Quadriplegic Games, FESPIC Games and State selection trials. A sporting complex in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney is named in his honor. The people of this Shire were his 'significant others'.
Kevin Cunningham was an Australian Paralympic athlete. A member of Australia's first Paralympic Games team, he participated at the 1960 Rome and 1968 Tel Aviv Paralympic Games.
The Third Commonwealth Paraplegic Games was a multi-sport event that was held in Edinburgh, Scotland from 26 July to 1 August 1970. Dubbed the "little games", they followed the 1970 British Commonwealth Games which were held in Edinburgh from 16 to 25 July of that year.
Charlene Stuart Meade was an Australian athlete who became the first Australian woman to participate in the Stoke Mandeville Games, the precursor to the Paralympic Games. She finished second amongst women in the archery event, and later competed in the 1959 edition in para-swimming, archery and javelin. At the 1974 games, she won a silver medal in table tennis. Todman later became active in dog sports.
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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