Jasmine Greenwood

At just 14, Jasmine Greenwood was the youngest Australian on the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games squad, but her early success and poise on the world stage, has already shown that she is an athlete to be taken as seriously as any other.

Jasmine made her international debut as a pre-teen at the 2017 Canadian Open in Toronto, where it took just two days to reach the podium with gold in the women’s 100m breaststroke SB9. This was an immense effort by the 12-year-old, but as would soon become apparent, we had seen nothing yet.

Competing at her first international multi-sport event, the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Jasmine placed fifth in the women’s 100m breaststroke SB9 and women’s 200m individual medley SM10. She followed it with a bronze medal in the women’s 100m butterfly S10 at the 2019 World Para-swimming Championships, and fourth place in the women’s 100m backstroke S10 and women’s 200m individual medley SM10.

At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games, the teenager won a silver medal in the women’s 100 m butterfly S10 with a time of 1:07.89, just 0.37 of a second behind the winner, Mikaela Jenkins of the United States.

In 2022, Jasmine won three medals at the World Para Swimming Championships – followed by a gold medal in the women’s 200m individual medley SM10, at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

But Jasmine was not always the superfish we know today. She only began swimming to rehabilitate an acquired brain injury, after two strokes triggered by acute appendicitis affected the movement in her entire left side.

It was then that Jasmine met her coach of three years, Bob McEvoy, who introduced her to the world of Para-sport – and encouraged her to fall in love it.