Rae Anderson

Rae Anderson learned to swim before she learned to walk. As she grew older, she sailed and surfed, and played soccer, basketball and OZTAG, before a chance encounter with superstar coach Iryna Dvoskina in 2010 inspired her to give Para-athletics a go.

Iryna would have liked to turn Rae into a champion sprinter, but Rae had other ideas. She made her international debut in the women’s long jump T37/38 at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, before realising her potential as a thrower.

In 2015, Rae represented Australia at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Doha, Qatar, where she placed sixth in the women’s javelin F37 and seventh in the women’s discus F37. Proving she is an elite athlete in the truest sense, she competed in the javelin on the same day as sitting her final exam for the Higher School Certificate.

Following an impressive performance on debut at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, where she finished just 1.01 metres from the podium in the women’s javelin F38, and personal best results in both javelin and discus in the lead-up to the 2017 World Para-athletics Championships in London, Rae arrived in the English capital in the form of her life. She finished second in the women’s javelin F37, but it was a non-medal event.

Rae is yet to know the feeling of winning a major international medal, but that could all change at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. If not, she is also in contention for the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games in Para-alpine skiing. If she does achieve selection to the Australian Team in 2022, she will become only the seventh person ever to represent Australia at a Paralympic Summer and Winter Games.