Richard Voris

Wheelchair rugby player Richard ‘Dickie’ Voris is on the verge of representing Australia at his first Paralympic Games.

But it was not always his dream to play wheelchair rugby. As a 19-year-old apprentice electrician, Richard was swimming in a mate’s backyard pool. The friend playfully tried to jump over him and into the water, but misjudged the distance, crushing Richard’s neck. He was paralysed immediately.

Richard’s journey to the Paralympic Games has not been an easy one – even by a Para-athlete’s standards. In 2016, while his teammates were defending their Paralympic gold medal from 2012, he contracted an autoimmune disease called myasthenia gravis. He lost all function in his body – so much so, he couldn’t open his eyes for eight months – and from then on, was unable to achieve any consistency in his training.

Richard says that becoming a Paralympian is all he dreams about, and as he struggles to contain his myasthenia gravis, the thought of potentially achieving selection to the 2020 Australian Paralympic Team is what spurs him on. The Paralympic movement has changed Richard’s life – it was through wheelchair rugby that he was able to rediscover his independence, and eventually manage without carers; through wheelchair rugby that he has travelled the world; through wheelchair rugby that he met his girlfriend of three years – teammate Andrew Edmondson‘s wife’s cousin.

The greatest challenge will now be to get his body to the Games. Richard was on track to compete at his first World Championships in 2018 – in his home town of Sydney, no less – when his myasthenia gravis was triggered. Every two weeks, he undergoes plasmapheresis, and has steroid injections to help offset the fatigue. While a flare-up can be difficult to predict, for the quality of play at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, if nothing else, the entire Australian wheelchair rugby community hopes to see Richard compete in Japan.