More than 700 people, including school students, attended the three-day event taking advantage of the opportunity to try a range of sports including wheelchair rugby and basketball, goalball, blind cricket, boccia, athletics and race-running.
Ben O’Flaherty from Newington Public School said the event was a fantastic opportunity to expose the students to the different sports.
“I had a meeting with a parent that said their son couldn’t stop talking about the day and I had some wonderful conversations with some of the students around inclusion on the walk back to school,” he said.
Athletes qualified for this year’s Tokyo Paralympics at the event included Dan Michel (boccia), Spencer Cotie (boccia), Tyan Taylor (goalball), along with wheelchair rugby players Mark Leslie and Richard Voris who are both still looking for selection.
Other attendees included three-time Paralympian Paul Nunnairi, as well as Legend in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, Louise Sauvage and Olympic athletes Cheryl Webb and Youcef Abdi.
Organised by True Sports Events, director Glen Lebeau said seeing the many different organisations working together towards the same goals of awareness and inclusion showed the “true spirit of sports”.
Serving as an excellent reminder of “how far we’ve come as a community”, Wheelchair Sports NSW CEO Mick Garnett said the Day of Disability was also a recognition of “the challenges that still remain for us to be truly inclusive”.
Paralympics Australia CEO Lynne Anderson described the IDPwD as providing a unique opportunity to acknowledge the “incredible contributions of people with a disability in our community”.
“The kind of contributions that I am lucky enough to bear witness to every day,” she said.
