"You are terrible": Brutal comment that drove Paralympian to greatness
<p>From a young age, Paralympian Madison de Rozario knew that people treated her differently. </p>
<p>"There's an enormous lack of expectation in what we [people with disabilities] are able to do in sport, in workplaces, in school," she told <em>9honey</em>. </p>
<p>"It can be the death of potential … I didn't recognise that's what I was experiencing as a young kid."</p>
<p>Born in Perth, Western Australia, De Rozario developed a neurological disease at just four-years-old and has used a wheelchair ever since.</p>
<p>It didn't hold her back from playing sports with her two sisters, and now she is a Paralympic champion with six medals to her name - two golds, three silvers, and a bronze medal.</p>
<p>De Rozario recalled how Frank Ponta – a silver medallist at the first ever Paralympics in 1960, an inaugural Australian Paralympic Hall of Famer, and coach to several Paralympic icons – helped her overcome her early doubts. </p>
<p>"There was a lot of sympathy, a lot of pity, which I didn't recognise as pity at the time," she said. </p>
<p>"And then there was Frank, and he had none of it."</p>
<p>Ponta was part of a generation of para athletes that fought for recognition and support back when most Australia treated them as if they were invisible.</p>
<p>She recalled how the first time Ponta saw her try to play basketball at just 12-years-old, he told her, "you are terrible at this sport".</p>
<p>While it's not exactly what a young athlete would expect to hear, she acknowledged that she was terrible, but Ponta saw her potential.</p>
<p>He dug an old racing wheelchair out of a storage cupboard, strapped her in and told her to go for a spin around the carpark. </p>
<p>"It was way too big for me and I absolutely fell in love with it," she recalled. </p>
<p>Not long after, Ponta was training her multiple times a week even in the toughest conditions.</p>
<p>Not only did he believe in her, he <em>expected</em> her to achieve great things and that expectation changed everything. </p>
<p>"I think he was the first person that didn't treat me carefully," she said. </p>
<p>"He just treated me like an athlete."</p>
<p>A year later, one of Ponta's protegees, Sauvage, took over De Rozario's coaching and helped her nab a last-minute spot at the Beijing Paralympics in 2008.</p>
<p>De Rozario debuted 48 years after Ponta and brought home the silver medal, the same medal he won at his debut. </p>
<p>Ponta sadly died in 2011, a year before De Rozario competed in London, leaving behind a legacy for all para athletes to come.</p>
<p>"I feel so just incredibly lucky that I had one of them in my corner. I didn't even realise it until he was gone," she said. </p>
<p>"I feel so lucky that that's how my career started, with someone who just embodied all of those things that now as a 30-year-old, I hold very, very close."</p>
<p>These memories help fuel her as she prepares for her fifth Paralympics in Paris this month. </p>
<p>This year she hopes to make Ponta proud and be the inspiration to the next generation of para athletes. </p>
<p>"That part still sits so restlessly in me," she said. </p>
<p><em>Image: DARREN ENGLAND/EPA-EFE/ Shutterstock Editorial</em></p>
