Prior to June 2010, Guy Henly had never thrown a discus.  By May 2011, he had won gold at the Oceania Paralympic Championships as part of the Arafura Games in Darwin. It represents a man on the rise in field athletics.

Towering over his competitors at six foot eight, Henly entered the discus cage at the 2011 Arafura Games in his first ever international competition. He threw a winning distance of 39.07m on the first night of athletics competition. Still, Guy is not satisfied and plans to increase his distance past the 50m barrier.

With five sisters, Evan O’Hanlon has always been quick. Involved in athletics at a school level, Evan was encouraged by a PE teacher to explore the possibility of competing as an athlete with a disability. He was linked to a coach through the APC Talent Search Program and has never looked back.

Evan exploded onto the world athletics stage in 2005, immediately creating a name for himself as the next big thing in Paralympic sprinting. On his first ever international tour, Evan won gold in the 100m and 200m at the 2005 German Nationals and European Championships.

Sam McIntosh’s life changed dramatically in 2007 when he fell off a BMX bike whilst on holiday with his family in Coffs Harbour. The accident broke Sam’s neck and he became a quadriplegic.

While recovering in hospital, the thrill-seeking boy from Geelong immediately drew inspiration from some stunt men he saw performing back flips in their wheelchairs and turned his attention to wheelchair rugby. However a chance encounter with Kaye Colman, the mother of Paralympic gold medallist Richard Colman, directed Sam down the path of wheelchair racing.

Sam Carter’s unrelenting motivation and determination to compete at the Paralympic Games makes him one of wheelchair racing’s most promising youngsters.

At just 19 years old, the Toowoomba athlete has already had a successful career in junior athletics competitions and is excited about making the transition into elite international competition at the IPC Athletics World Championships in New Zealand. Most recently, Sam competed at the 2009 Junior Athletics World Championships where he won gold in the U20 100m.

After taking up running at the end of 2009, Western Australia’s Sam Harding is in good company, training with the likes of Beijing Paralympians Evan O’Hanlon, Michael Roeger and Brad Scott as well as retired track star and multiple gold medallist Heath Francis at the AIS in Canberra.

In 2010, Rachael Dodds tasted elite athletic success when she broke the world record for the T35 200m at the Australian Athletics Championships in Perth.

Continuing her stellar breakthrough into senior athletics, Rachael won gold in the 200m and silver in the 100m at the 2011 IPC Athletics World Championships.

 From the tiny Queensland settlement of Pilton, south of Toowoomba, Nicole Vernon grew up on a cattle farm, in what she describes as “the middle of nowhere.”

When she was 14, to pass the time Nicole tried out for the Darling Downs Athletics Club and quickly learnt that not only did she have a talent in discus and shot put but was developing a passion for it.

For Nicholas Hum, sport runs through his veins. Growing up, his father represented Victoria on the track while his grandmother worked in the Athlete Village at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. It will be exactly 56 years since the Hum family’s first brush with elite sport that Nicholas hopes to represent Australia at the London Paralympic Games in 2012.

When Jamie McInerney was five years old, she acquired a severe brain injury from a car accident, resulting in a loss of movement on her right side and her speech.

More than a decade on and with much therapy, Jamie has not only regained some use of her right side but is also a national success in athletics.

One of the Australian athletic team’s youngest members, the London 2012 Games promises to be the experience of a lifetime for Georgia Beikoff. The talented all-round athlete is a recent convert to javelin but it hasn’t stopped her producing impressive results.