Joel
Coughlan

When Joel Coughlan started competing in table tennis as an eight-year-old, he had no idea that one day he would be aiming to represent his country at the Paralympic Games.

Joel was a professional table tennis athlete and aspiring miner when, at the age of 21, he was severely injured in a workplace accident. While he was working as a labourer in an industrial workshop in Rockhampton, QLD, half a tonne of mining equipment fell from a forklift. Joel lost three toes on his right foot and muscle in his right leg, and underwent nearly three dozen operations, skin grafting, renal dialysis and a tendon transfer.

Even after the accident, Joel continued to train under his coach of then 13 years, Pam Clarke. His transition from table tennis to Para-table tennis was seamless, and in 2009, he made his international debut at the 2009 International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Para-table Tennis Asia and Oceania Championships in Amman, Jordan.

Since then, Joel has gone from strength to strength. He defeated the world No. 3 in the men’s singles Class 10 at the 2011 ITTF Para-table Tennis Asia and Oceania Championships in Hong Kong, narrowly missed selection to the Australian Paralympic Team for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, and won his first international gold medal at the 2019 Arafura Games in Darwin, NT, where he also won a quota spot for Australia for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

Joel’s first opportunity to test the Tokyo waters came at the 2019 ITTF Para-table Tennis Japan Open last August, where he played through to the quarter-finals. Now finalising his preparation for the Games, Joel says that selection to the Australian Paralympic Team represented years of hard work finally paying off.

At Toyko 2020, he played alongside Ma Lin and Nathan Pellissier in the men’s class 9-10, finishing in second behind China to claim the silver medal. Joel played alongside Ma in the opening doubles match, however the Chinese team won in straight sets 3-0 [11-3, 11-6, 11-9].  Lin Ma took on Hao Lian in the singles match, with the Chinese winning 2-0, leaving the Australian team to claim the silver medal.  In the men’s individual C10, he lost his three matches in the group stage and did not advance.