A towering presence in Australian wheelchair basketball, Brad enters London 2012 as the captain of the reigning Paralympic champions. There are not too many Paralympic athletes who can lay claim to being a full-time professional sportsperson. Brad Ness can.

Brad was a sports-mad teenager who excelled in swimming, tennis, hurdles and his favourite code, AFL. As a teenager, he worked as a deckhand aboard a high-speed ferry between Rottnest Island and Fremantle, before losing his leg when he was 18.

“We were preparing to leave the pier when the skipper thought he heard me calling ‘all clear’, but the rope I was attending was still attached to the quayside. When the ferry moved out, the rope tightened and sliced off my right ankle as neatly as a chef chopping through a carrot.”

After seeing a wheelchair basketball match on television, Brad decided to give it a go and hasn’t looked back. He debuted for the Rollers in the 1999 Roosevelt Cup, setting the scene for a decorated career. In 2000, he was awarded a sporting scholarship by the University of Texas and now plays in Italian Series A league. Brad is fluent in Italian and resides with his wife in Italy for most of the year.

After winning a silver medal in Athens, the Australian Rollers captain led his team to victory in Beijing with a much-deserved gold medal win over Canada. The Australian wheelchair basketball team had not won a Paralympic gold medal since Atlanta 1996. After leading his team to Paralympic glory, Brad cried with happiness, describing it as complete “euphoria.” Since then, he has led Australia to a World Championships gold medal in 2010. In 2007, he was awarded the Sandy Blythe Medal for International Wheelchair Basketball Player of the Year. He is again captain as the Rollers bid for a repeat at London 2012.

Brad has also enjoyed an illustrious career in the NWBL, currently playing with the Perth Wheelcats. He was named NWBL Most Valuable Player in 2006 and has won championships’ in 2000, 2002 and 2007. He was part of the Perth team that lost the 2011 NWBL Championship decider to Wollongong.

Away from the Paralympics, Brad has set up two mini basketball teams for kids with disabilities in Cantu and Roma. He enjoys relaxing water sports and intends to spend many more hours at the beach in the years to come.