Neroli Susan Fairhall was a New Zealand athlete, who was the first paraplegic competitor in the Olympic Games.
Christie Dawes is an Australian Paralympic wheelchair racing athlete. She has won three medals in athletics at seven Paralympics from 1996 to 2021.
Graham Thomas Condon was a disabled athlete who won seven medals for New Zealand competing in Paralympic swimming and athletic events and a total of 36 medals in international competition overall. He was also a local-body politician and a disability advocate.
Dame Sophie Frances Pascoe is a New Zealand para-swimmer. She has represented New Zealand at four Summer Paralympic Games from 2008, winning a total of eleven gold medals, seven silver medals and one bronze medal, making her New Zealand's most successful Paralympian. She has also represented New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games.
Athletics at the 1976 Summer Paralympics consisted of 207 events. Argentina, Burma, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Peru won their first ever medals in the 1976 Summer Paralympics.
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.
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.
Gary Leslie Hooper, MBE is an Australian Paralympic competitor. He won seven medals at three Paralympics from 1960 to 1968.
Terence Kenneth Giddy was an Australian Paralympic athlete with paraplegia, who won six medals over six Paralympics.
Brian Frederick McNicholl, OAM is a New Zealand-born Australian Paralympic powerlifter, weightlifter, wheelchair basketballer, and athlete, who won five medals at six Paralympic games from 1976 to 1996.
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.
Terry Mason is an Australian Paralympic athlete and weightlifter, who won two bronze medals at two Paralympics.
Nikita Stevie Howarth is a New Zealand para-cyclist and para-swimmer. She became New Zealand's youngest ever Paralympian after being selected for the 2012 Summer Paralympics, aged 13 years 8 months. She again represented New Zealand at the 2016 Summer Paralympics, where she won the gold medal in the women's 200 metre individual medley SM7 and the bronze medal in the women's 50 metre butterfly S7.
New Zealand competed at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 7 to 18 September 2016. It was the nation's thirteenth appearance at the Summer Paralympics, having made its debut in 1968 and appeared in every edition since.
Holly Irene Robinson is a New Zealand para-athlete, primarily competing in the javelin throw. She represented New Zealand at the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Summer Paralympics, winning silver in 2016 and gold in 2020. At the 2016 Games, she was New Zealand's flagbearer for the opening ceremony.
Benjamin Robert Lucas is a New Zealand sports administrator and retired wheelchair racer. He has represented his country at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, and the 1996 and 2000 Summer Paralympics. He was chef de mission for the New Zealand 2016 Summer Paralympics team.
William Lean (1941–2015) was a New Zealand Paralympic athlete from Dunedin. In the 1968 Summer Paralympics he competed in archery, athletics, dartchery and table tennis. In the 1976 Summer Paralympics he competed in athletics, table tennis and weightlifting, winning a gold medal in Athletics in the Men's Shot Put 4.
David Ross Hynds was a New Zealand Paralympic sportsperson. In the 1976 Summer Paralympics he competed in athletics, winning a bronze medal in the men's discus throw 1C. Hynds made his debut at these Games, going on to represent New Zealand at the 1976, 1980, 1984, and 1992 in archery and athletics.
Victor Salvemini was an Australian Paralympic athlete from Western Australia. As a wheelchair athlete, he competed in several sports including archery, basketball and track sprinting in the 1970s. A paraplegic, he lost the use of both his legs after a car accident in Fremantle, Western Australia in 1961 when he was 14 years old.
