Angie Ballard

Angela Ballard (born 6 June 1982) is an Australian Paralympic athlete who competes in T53 wheelchair sprint events.

She became a paraplegic at age 7 due to a car accident.

Ballard was born on 6 June 1982 in Canberra.

At the age of seven, she became a (T10) paraplegic after a car accident, when her mother lost control of the car through fatigue.

Following the accident, her initial hospitalisation and rehabilitation was in Canberra for three months, among elderly amputees.

She began competing in wheelchair racing in 1994, and first represented Australia in 1998.

Ballard first entered competitive wheelchair races in 1994, at the age of twelve.

Her first racing wheelchair was bought second hand.

By 1997, she started taking the sport more seriously and began setting records in Australian athletics for her classification.

A year later she was representing her country on the international stage.

Ballard held athletics scholarships at the Australian Institute of Sport from 1999 to 2001, and The University of Sydney (while studying first commerce and then psychology ), and also represents the New South Wales Institute of Sport.

She has been appointed by a number of organisations as a disability or sports ambassador, and currently sits on the board of Wheelchair Sports NSW.

She was offered a scholarship with the ACT Academy of Sport and she then took up an athletics scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra from 1999 to 2001.

Over six Paralympic Games from 2000 to 2020, she has won four silver and four bronze medals.

She has been coached by Louise Sauvage and trained with Madison de Rozario.

By 2000, she held national records in the T53 100 m and 200 m events.

Ballard competed in Sydney in the 2000 Summer Paralympics but did not win any medals, placing fourth in both the 100 m and 200 m events; she was also a torch bearer, and featured in the entertainment section of the opening ceremony, where she circled the track 12.3 m in the air, suspended by a blimp and giant inflated angels.

In 2002, she moved to Sydney to attend university on a sports scholarship, initially studying commerce.

, she was living in Liberty Grove, New South Wales and attending the University of Sydney studying for a Bachelor of Psychology, with the intention of practising as a psychologist.

From 2002 she held a sports scholarship at the University of Sydney, where she was coached by Andrew Dawes (Christie's husband).

At the time, Dawes also coached Louise Sauvage, and on occasion the two would train together.

After Sauvage retired from competitive wheelchair athletics following the 2004 Games, she became Ballard's coach.

In 2021, she is coached by Fred Periac.

In preparation for the 2004 Athens Paralympics, Ballard trained six days a week in 11 sessions.

Her training included going to Centennial Park and training on the hills there.

It also included track work twice a week and doing weight training at least three times a week.

This training schedule caused a few injuries, so she reduced the training frequency for later Games.

Just before the Games, she competed in a warm up event in Switzerland, and set Australian records in the 100 m, 400 m and 800 m events.

At the 2004 games, she won a bronze medal in the T53 100 m, behind Tanni Grey-Thompson and Francesca Porcellato.

Her rehabilitation was then moved to the Royal North Shore Hospital, where she met Christie Dawes (née Skelton), who she would later race with in the Australian 4x100 m relay team at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics.

She attended Lyneham Primary School and Lyneham High School in Canberra.

Her physical education teacher was one of the people who first encouraged her to participate in wheelchair sports.

After her rehabilitation she tried swimming and wheelchair basketball.

Her first experiences of racing at the age of 12 resulted in blisters and a sore neck, but wheelchair athletics soon became her passion.

At age 14, after treatment for scoliosis, Ballard was unable to participate in sport for a year.

Her goal for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics was to set a personal best, but she also had eyes on a medal.

She took the year off her psychology degree to train six times a week.

She graduated and received an Alumni Award in 2014.

Ballard is a wheelchair racing athlete, competing mainly in category T53 sprint events.

Compared to T54 athletes, she has less use of her abdominal muscles, which means she cannot raise herself as much in her wheelchair to get the best angle to propel herself forward.