| Personal information | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationality |  Australia | |||||||||||
| Born | 28 November 1975 Sunshine, Victoria | |||||||||||
Medal record
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Anthony Bonaccurso is a Paralympic alpine skier and tennis player competitor from Australia. He won a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Games in the Men's Doubles event. [1] He is one of the few Australian Paralympians to compete at both Summer and Winter Games. [2]
He was born on 28 November 1975 in Sunshine, Victoria. [3] At the age of 17, he climbed a pole at a railway station and was electrocuted and fell to the ground. The fall resulted in spinal injuries. [4]
He took up wheelchair tennis in 1993 and joined the tour at the age of 23. [3] In 2002, he was a member of the Australian team that won the World Team Cup in Italy. [3] At the 2004 Athens Summer Games, he teamed with David Hall to win the bronze medal in the Men's Doubles. He was a top 20 player and won six consecutive Victorian Hardcourt Championships. He is currently a tennis coach for wheelchair and able-bodied tennis players. [3]
Australian wheelchair tennis coach Greg Crump commented that "His attitude is, that's what you've got, get on with it. He played tennis as part of his rehab and carried on from there. He's very strong, fit, fast and focused." [4]
Bonaccurso is a player ambassador for the International Tennis Federation wheelchair program. [5] In 2015, he and renowned tennis coach Greg Crump, visited Cambodia to raise awareness about wheelchair tennis through a series of coaching clinics and interactive sessions with boys and girls taking part in the ITF-Tennis Cambodia program. [6]
He first represented Australia at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games where he competed in three alpine skiing events. His best result was 17th in the Men's Slalom LW11. After the Games, he returned to wheelchair tennis.
Satoshi Saida is a Japanese pioneering wheelchair tennis player and 2004 Summer Paralympics gold medalist.
Peter Robert Norfolk OBE is a British wheelchair tennis player. Following a motorbike accident which left him paraplegic, he uses a wheelchair. He took up tennis and following a further spinal complication in 2000, he began competing in the quad division. He is nicknamed The Quadfather.
Australia has participated officially in every Paralympic Games since its inauguration in 1960 except for the 1976 Winter Paralympics.
The 1996 Summer Paralympics were held in the United States city of Atlanta. Australia competed in 13 of the 17 sports, winning medals in 10 of those sports. At the 1996 Summer Paralympics, Australia had the second highest medal tally of any country competing. It won 42 gold, 37 silver and 27 bronze medals. It surpassed the 24 gold medals that Australia won at the 1992 Paralympics. The sports of athletics, swimming and cycling provided Australia with the majority of its medals.
Australia competed at the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens, Greece. It was Australia's 12th year of participation at the Paralympics. The team included 151 athletes. Australian competitors won 101 medals to finish fifth in the gold medal table and second on the total medal table. Australia competed in 12 sports and won medals in 8 sports. The Chef de Mission was Paul Bird. The Australian team was smaller than the Sydney Games due to a strict selection policy related to the athletes' potential to win a medal and the International Paralympic Committee's decision to remove events for athletes with an intellectual disability from the Games due to issues of cheating at the Sydney Games. This was due to a cheating scandal with the Spanish intellectually disabled basketball team in the 2000 Summer Paralympics where it was later discovered that only two players actually had intellectual disabilities. The IPC decision resulted in leading Australian athletes such as Siobhan Paton and Lisa Llorens not being able to defend their Paralympic titles. The 2000 summer paralympic games hosted in Sydney Australia proved to be a milestone for the Australian team as they finished first on the medal tally for the first time in history. In comparing Australia's 2000 Paralympic performance and their 2004 performance, it is suggested that having a home advantage might affect performance.
David Robert Hall, OAM is an Australian former professional wheelchair tennis player. With eight US Open singles titles, two Masters singles titles, and a Paralympic gold medal in singles, he has been referred to as Australia's greatest ever wheelchair tennis player.
Gregory Stephen Smith, OAM is an Australian Paralympic athlete and wheelchair rugby player who won three gold medals in athletics at the 2000 Summer Paralympics, and a gold medal in wheelchair rugby at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, where he was the flag bearer at the opening ceremony.
Daniela "Danni" Di Toro is an Australian wheelchair tennis and table tennis player. Di Toro was the 2010 French Open doubles champion and has also been the Masters double champion. In singles, Di Toro is the former world number one and two time masters finalist. In 2015, she moved to para-table tennis and represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics, where she was team captain with Kurt Fearnley. At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, her sixth Paralympics, she was the team captain and Opening Ceremony flag bearer with Ryley Batt.
Ben Weekes is an Australian wheelchair tennis player. He represented Australia at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, his fifth Games.
Janel Manns is an Australian wheelchair tennis player. She has been selected to represent Australia at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in tennis.
Wheelchair tennis first entered the Summer Paralympic Games in 1988 as a demonstration sport and as a full medal sport at the 1992 Barcelona Games. Australia has competed at every Paralympic wheelchair tennis competition. There are two categories of medals - open division and quad division.
Gordon James Reid is a British professional wheelchair tennis player. He was ranked world No. 1 in singles and world No. 1 in doubles. He is a Paralympic gold, silver, and bronze medalist, two-time Grand Slam singles champion, and twenty-two time Grand Slam doubles champion.
Christopher Minko is an Australian musician and co-founder of the Phnom Penh-based Delta blues group called Krom. Living in Cambodia since 1996, Minko is also the founder and Secretary General of the Cambodian National Volleyball League (Disabled) NGO, also known as CNVLD.
Heath Arthur Davidson, is an Australian wheelchair tennis player. Davidson is a four-time Australian Open doubles champion, all partnering Dylan Alcott. He has also won two Paralympic medals, a gold and silver in doubles at the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, respectively.
Rafael de Souza Oliveira is a Brazilian former professional footballer who last played for Phnom Penh Crown of the Cambodian League in 2014.
Andrea Daravy Ka is a Cambodian former tennis player.
The UT Arlington Movin' Mavs men's wheelchair basketball team, previously known as the UTA Freewheelers, is the men's college wheelchair basketball team representing the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Established in 1976 as the UTA Freewheelers, the team played at the club level against other colleges and universities in Texas during the 1970s and 1980s. It has played under the auspices of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA) since 1988, when the team was renamed the Movin' Mavs. Its inaugural coach, from 1976 until 2008, was Jim Hayes. The team was coached by Doug Garner from 2008 until 2022 when he retired. In fall of 2022, Aaron Gouge was hired as the new head coach for the team.
Ratana Techamaneewat, also known as Chanungarn Techamaneewat, is a Thai wheelchair tennis player.
Martyn Dunn is an Australian wheelchair tennis player. He represented Australia at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, his first Games.
