Jessica Gallagher

On her 24th birthday, she won a bronze medal at the Vancouver games in the women's slalom visually impaired event, becoming the first Australian woman to do so.

Jessica Gallagher (born 14 March 1986) is an Australian Paralympic alpine skier, track and field athlete, tandem cyclist and rower.

Gallagher was born on 14 March 1986 and lives in the Geelong suburb of Highton.

Despite her low vision and missing one third of the games due to her Paralympic training program, she won the A grade Best and Fairest Award in 2007, representing Leopold.

Gallagher is also a snowboarder, having taken up the sport while on a working holiday in Vail, Colorado before she found out about the Winter Paralympic Games.

Gallagher was the first Australian woman to win a medal at the Winter Paralympics, and Australia's second female Winter Paralympian.

She was given the opportunity to compete at the highest levels in skiing after being identified during a talent search and because of her snowboarding experience.

As she is blind, she competes with a guide with Eric Bickerton being her first guide.

She is coached by Steve Graham, who also coached Michael Milton and is the current head coach of the Australian Institute of Sport's Winter Paralympic program.

Her Australian training base is at the Victorian Institute of Sport's training centre located at Lakeside Stadium in South Melbourne.

While actively training six days a week, her individual training sessions will last between two and three hours each a total of ten to twelve sessions by the end of the week.

Gallagher was selected to compete at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics in long jump, 100m, shot put and discus, but she failed her classification test because the classifiers said the eyesight in her right eye was 0.01% better than it needed to be.

In 2009, she graduated from RMIT University with a Master of Osteopathy, and is a registered osteopath.

In November 2009, her classification was revisited due to deterioration of her vision and she was deemed eligible to compete.

Gallagher first represented Australia in 2009 at the New Zealand Winter Games, where she won a gold medal.

She was Australia's second female Winter Paralympian, and the first Australian woman to win a medal at the Winter Paralympics at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

At the time of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Paralympics, she was dating the American Paralympic sitting ski slalomer Gerald Hayden.

In January 2010, she competed at her first IPC Alpine Skiing World Cup event in Austria and won a bronze medal in slalom.

Before the start of the 2010 Games, she had competed in nine World Cup events.

In her first and second time down the hill, she finished third both times, She also competed in the women's giant slalom visually impaired event at the 2010 Games, finishing seventh after headset issues that caused problems with communication.

Besides her skiing achievements, she has represented Australia in athletics at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, and won a silver and a bronze medal at the 2011 Christchurch IPC Athletics World Championships in long jump and javelin, respectively.

She has also represented the state of Victoria as a junior in netball and basketball.

In 2013, at the IPC Alpine Skiing World Cup in Thredbo, New South Wales, several weeks after taking on her new guide, Christian Geiger, she won two silver medals in giant slalom and slalom.

She competed at the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi, where she won a bronze medal in the women's giant slalom visually impaired.

She is legally blind, and represents Australia internationally in three sports: skiing, athletics and cycling.

Gallagher was selected in the Australian cycling team with her pilot Madison Janssen for the 2016 Rio Paralympics.

Her "long term goal is to be the first Australian to medal at a summer and winter Paralympics or Olympics".

This was achieved when she won a bronze medal in the women's B/VI 1000m time trial in Rio.

In March 2018 she was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.

In December 2023, Gallagher was awarded Honorary Doctor of Social Science by RMIT University.

She played netball and basketball with able-bodied competitors, having first participated at the elite level in both sports as she started to lose her vision.

In netball, she was a goal keeper and goal attack, represented Victoria several times and was named as an emergency for the Australian U16 team.

In the Victorian league's Championship Division, she represented both Palladians and Altona Lightning.

In basketball, she represented the Geelong Cats for five years and also represented Victoria Country.

At that time, her goal was to become a professional netball or basketball player.

As well, she played netball in the Geelong Football Netball League, representing South Barwon and Leopold.

She is an ambassador for the Australian Paralympic Committee, Vision Australia, Seeing Eye Dogs Australia, Vision 2020 Australia, Kx Pilates and 2XU.

She is legally blind due to Best's disease, a rare condition.

She started to lose her eyesight when she was a teenager, having received the results of tests while she was competing at the U17 national netball championships.

Gallagher was appointed to the Board of Vision 2020 Australia in June 2015 and is also a member of its Member, Finance and Audit Committee.