Ashleigh
McConnell

Ashleigh McConnell etched her name in Paralympic history at her first Paralympic Games in 2016, when she and her women’s 4x100m freestyle relay 34 Points teammates – Ellie Cole, Maddison Elliott and Lakeisha Patterson – won gold in world record time.

Despite this success, the early years of Ashleigh’s career had been marred by painful near misses. She came within 0.12 seconds of the qualifying time for the London 2012 Paralympic Games, and only just fell short of selection to the Australian team for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

While it was another year before Ashleigh received her first international cap, she made certain she would not wait long for her second, returning home from the 2015 International Paralympic Committee Swimming World Championships with a gold medal in the women’s 4x100m freestyle 34 Points.

As well as winning gold in the freestyle relay at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, Ashleigh also reached the finals of the women’s 50m freestyle S9 and women’s 100m freestyle S9, and at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, she won her first major individual medal, bronze in the women’s 100m backstroke S9.

At her second Paralympic campaign at Tokyo 2020, she finished sixth in the women’s 100m freestyle S9 with a time of 1:03.81. She joined teammates Ellie Cole, Isabella Vincent, and Emily Beecroft in the women’s 4x100m freestyle 34 points relay. The team stormed home to finish in third, however, due to the gold-medal-winning USA team being disqualified, Australia was promoted to second position to claim the silver medal.

Training under two-time Olympian Kenrick Monk ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, Ashleigh currently splits her time between the pool and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where she hopes to graduate with a Bachelor of Business in 2022.