Ellie Cole is one of Australia’s most accomplished Paralympians, with 15 Paralympic medals and two world records to her name.
The Melbourne-born swimmer moved to Hornsby in 2019 and is training for the Tokyo Paralympics through the Knox Pymble Swim Club.
At three years old, Cole’s right leg was amputated after suffering from a life-threatening sarcoma cancer. Eight weeks after the amputation, Cole began swimming as part of a rehabilitation program.
Aided by her love for swimming and a naturally competitive spirit, Cole progressed more quickly than her instructors predicted. By 2003, Cole was swimming competitively, eventually making her way onto the Australian swim team.
“I was just really competitive as a kid,” says Cole.
“When I was training, I always wanted to beat the kids that I was in the squads with. Most of them had two legs, but I wanted to be the fastest. I wasn’t expecting to win any medals or anything.”
At 14, Cole took home a silver medal at the 2006 IPC World Swimming Championships in South Africa.
Recognising her potential, the Australian swim team coaches started training her for the Beijing Paralympics.
Now, Cole has six gold, four silver and five Bronze medals from the Beijing, London and Rio Paralympic Games, and currently holds the women’s 4x100m freestyle Relay record.
Despite a double shoulder reconstruction threatening to end her career in 2015, Cole went on to represent Australia in the IPC World Championships and claimed a new world record in the Women’s 100m Backstroke.
Cole may be young, but within her lifetime she has witnessed how attitudes towards disability has drastically changed.
“Growing up, people just weren’t educated on differences,” says Cole.
“Now, I basically get treated exactly the same [as everyone else]. It’s totally different. I think having the Paralympics is definitely the catalyst for that change, because the general public get to see the power of sport and how people with disabilities are just as capable. It’s completely changed their mindset on disabilities.”
Cole recently featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix, in which she discussed the importance of sport in challenging previously-held assumptions about disabilities.
“Even though everyone has a pretty extreme disability in the Paralympics, in a way a lot of people can relate to them just being your everyday person and having a lot of challenges and overcoming them,” says Cole.
“At the Olympics, the athletes you see are generally an outlier when it comes to their physical performances, people who are genetically gifted. Whereas the athletes at the Paralympics usually aren’t genetically gifted, they’re just the ones who have a lot of grit and a lot of determination and have had a lot to overcome.”
For now, Cole continues her demanding training schedule at Knox Grammar under her coach Nick Dobson.
The Tokyo Paralympic Games are set to begin on August 24, 2021.
