The Making Of Australia’s Only Female W1 Para Archer

At 17, Rosie-Marie Attard was driving to her final Year 12 assembly in regional NSW, heading towards one of life’s expected milestones, when a split-second decision changed everything.

Swerving to avoid an animal, she rolled her car and sustained a serious spinal cord injury.

What followed was a future she had never planned for, and a long process of learning how to navigate life differently, one day at a time.

Years later, a friend suggested she attend a Future Green And Gold talent search.

Delivered by the Australian Institute of Sport in collaboration with the National Institute Network, national sporting organisations, Paralympics Australia and state-based programs, Future Green And Gold is designed to identify aspiring athletes and help guide them onto the best possible Para sport and high performance pathway ahead of Brisbane 2032.

Through testing, sport sampling and talent identification activities, participants are introduced to sports they may never have previously considered.

At the time, Attard wasn’t looking for a sport and certainly wasn’t chasing a Paralympic dream. By her own admission, she had never considered herself particularly sporty.

“I’ve never been a sports person because competing isn’t my thing,” she says. “I’ll do my best, you do your best, and we just cheer each other along the way.”

But she went anyway and that decision would change the direction of her life.

As Future Green And Gold talent searches return nationwide, Attard’s story offers a powerful example of where an open mind can lead, with the initiative once again offering Australians with disability the chance to explore their potential in Para sport.

Future Green & Gold talent searches currently taking place around the country, registrations remain open for Australians interested in exploring their own Para sport potential: www.ausport.gov.au/talent/paralympic 

Attard doesn’t spend much time dwelling on what might have been.

She could, if she wanted to.  

She could also think about all the things that never happened because of the crash that changed her life at 17.

But that’s not really how she sees the world.

Infectiously optimistic, she tends to orient herself towards what comes next.

Or, as she puts it: “If we don’t laugh, you cry.”

It’s a line that has become something of a shorthand between Attard and her father, a shared language forged in the aftermath of trauma and sustained by a stubborn, slightly warped sense of humour.

“We’ve always had that between us,” she says. “Even in hospital, even in the worst of it. Dad would just say something ridiculous to make me laugh.”

There’s a pause.

“Honestly, our humour is probably a bit messed up. But it works.”

That outlook has carried Attard through her injury, countless physical adjustments and a life she never expected to be living – and, eventually, to an opportunity not even her wildest dream could’ve imagined.

When Archery Australia coach Sarah Fuller first spotted her at the Future Green And Gold event, Attard was sitting quietly off to the side of the room, with her father nearby.

“I saw her tucked away in a little corner,” Fuller says. “We didn’t have any W1 female athletes at that stage, so I thought, ‘Right, I’m going to go get her’.”

Fuller didn’t hesitate.

“Hey you, you’re going to try archery.”

Attard responded, unfiltered: “What’s archery?”

There wasn’t much time to overthink before Fuller guided her over to the inflatable range set up for the event.

“We don’t just sit behind a desk and hope people come to us,” Fuller says. “We go out, we find people.”

For Attard, it wasn’t a carefully considered sporting decision so much as curiosity.

“So, I tried it,” she says. “That was it.”

One session became another, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, a sport she knew nothing about became something she looked forward to, drawn not by competition, but by the people and the satisfaction of learning something difficult.

“The people have been really, really great,” she says. “And something about shooting the bow just feels really cool. It’s fun.”

Archery also offered something unique, a sport that adapts to the athlete, rather than the other way around.

Athletes may shoot from wheelchairs, use customised release systems, adapt equipment around limited hand function, or develop entirely individual techniques depending on their impairment and movement.

“You’re only really limited by what your brain can think of,” Fuller says. “We can adapt equipment in so many different ways. That’s what makes archery special.”

At the time, Australia had no regularly competing female W1 Para archers on the international circuit, a classification reserved for athletes with significant impairment across both upper and lower limbs and one that has historically had limited visibility nationally.

“Rosie is the only active W1 female in the country, and probably one of about 15 in the world,” Fuller says. “For us, this is a category we need to actively go out and find more athletes for.

“These Green and Gold events have really made it possible to find athletes for those niche spots,” Fuller says. “The more we can do, the better.”

What stood out just as much as her potential, Fuller says, was the way she approached everything. 

“She’s naturally aware of where her body is in space.”

“Even though she doesn’t think so, she’s naturally skilled. She’s got a great attitude, she understands how to adapt and she just gets on with everyone.”

Less than two years after asking, “What’s archery?”, Attard found herself representing Australia at the Para Asia Cup in Thailand.

She finished sixth.

“It was amazing,” she says. “The people were lovely; the support was lovely. I wasn’t made to feel like a newbie at all.”

The result barely registers when she talks about it now.

“I was just happy to get every arrow on the target,” she says. “That was the goal.”

For someone who never imagined being involved in sport, let alone elite sport, the speed and scale of it all still feels faintly surreal.

“I’ve never been a huge sports person,” she says. “And now all of a sudden we’re talking about all these possibilities.”

She laughs.

“It’s a big pill to swallow,” she says. “A glitter pill, for sure. But still a big one.”

Today, Attard represents Australia as the country’s only active female W1 Para archer, a status that felt simultaneously validating and confronting once it became official.

“It made it feel real,” she says. “Like, okay, I actually belong here. This isn’t something I’m trying out anymore.”

Three of her four limbs remain significantly impacted as a result of the crash that changed her life, something she describes without embellishment.

“It just is what it is,” she says, matter-of-factly.

Even so, she understands the strange duality attached to the classification itself.

“It felt a little bit double-edged,” she says. “Everyone was really excited to finally have a W1 female, but at the same time, that means your body’s pretty well done for.”

Then she laughs again.

“But we celebrate it anyway.”

For Paralympics Australia Senior Manager – Pathways, Scott Nicholas, stories like Attard’s reinforce why visible and accessible entry points into sport matter.

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” Nicholas says.

“Seeing athletes like Rosie-Marie enter a sport and progress shows there are still opportunities for people who may not have traditionally considered themselves to be high performance athletes.”

He says partnerships between sports and initiatives such as Future Green And Gold and Try Para Sport are helping create those opportunities earlier and more intentionally than ever before.

“Sometimes a small interaction can lead to significant outcomes,” he says.

Attard is reluctant to map too far ahead. 

There are competitions, training camps and conversations about future Paralympic qualification pathways ahead, but she prefers to take things as they come.

“I’m not a huge planner,” she says.

If she could speak to herself in the early days after her injury, her message would be simple:

“Life is OK,” she says. “You will find your path. You will find your people – and you will be OK.”

Then she corrects herself slightly.

“You are OK.”

There’s a pause.

“I’ve got a great network and I think that’s the biggest contributor to being so OK.”

Archery has already taken her further than she ever imagined, though she resists any suggestion that the experience has fundamentally changed who she is.

“I’m still figuring it out as I go,” she says.

That philosophy isn’t particularly profound for Attard, it’s practical.

“You just keep going,” she says. “There’s no other way, really.”

A teenager drives to her final Year 12 assembly, a split-second decision changes everything, years later, a friend suggests a talent search, an archery coach starts a conversation, and a woman who never considered herself sporty finds herself representing Australia.

None of it was planned.

But that’s never really been the point.

For now, she’s content to keep saying yes to whatever comes next.

And if things get difficult along the way, she already has a philosophy for that.

“If we don’t laugh, you cry.”

Find out more or register for upcoming Future Green & Gold talent search events via the Australian Sports Commission’s Paralympic Talent Search program: Paralympic Talent Search | ASC

By Ashley Gillespie, Paralympics

Published 22 June, 2026.