Paralympian Madison de Rozario on the greatest challenges of her career

For Madison de Rozario, a pivotal moment in her life was once clearly in sight. The Australian wheelchair racer and Paralympian was on her way to the UK to compete in the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

However, upon arriving in Newcastle, where the Australian team had planned to prepare for the competition, she was rushed to the hospital with a deep vein thrombosis. The DVT was a blood clot that had formed on the plane. "I didn't think it was a big deal at the time; a blood clot sounded so small," de Rozario recalled.

Scans revealed the clot was 40cm long and dangerously close to her heart, causing great concern. Doctors advised that the best course of action was strong blood thinners to minimize the risk of a stroke. This meant de Rozario would be unable to move for several days. Stranded in a foreign country without family, she watched her chance to compete slip away. "It was quite an isolating and scary experience. I was 20 years old and being told that they couldn't guarantee this was going to work," she said.

"I spent a lot of days alone in the hospital, really scared and really unsure of what was going to happen." At the same time, another thought was nagging at her: relief. "I kept thinking, if there was ever a reason for me to step away from the sport, I would be relieved because I don't think I like it, but I can't see a way out of it," she said. "[Racing] is all I've ever known, it's been my whole life."

Banned from competing, she could only watch from the stands as her teammate and roommate, Angie Ballard, competed in the races she had trained for. This brought a complex mix of feelings. "[Ballard] gave me my first racing wheelchair; she's supported me since I was 12," de Rozario said. "I was watching her win the races that I thought I should be winning… I wasn't ready to be confronted with such complex emotions, both happy for someone I loved so much achieving something and also feeling jealous or negative."

After the race, she rushed to congratulate her friend. "She said to me, asking if I was OK and saying it must have been really challenging to watch," de Rozario said. "I realised that because of this sport that I was starting to resent, I was surrounded by the greatest people." "I remember coming back from that trip and thinking, 'I do love this sport… I can't give it up, but I can't keep going the way I'm going'."

De Rozario grew up in Perth and started wheelchair racing at the age of 12. At 14, she made her debut as the youngest member of the Australian team at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, winning a silver medal in the 100m relay. She went on to compete in the world's most prestigious sporting events. Now 31, she has won a string of medals – including two Paralympic gold medals and four Commonwealth Games gold medals – and set a world record in the women's 800m. She also became the first Australian woman to win the New York City Marathon and the first Australian to win the London Marathon wheelchair title.

She has become one of Australia's most celebrated athletes, an outspoken advocate for people with disabilities, and even has a Barbie doll modeled after her. But her early success was both a blessing and a curse. "[At 14,] I didn't know what I was doing. I was surrounded by the greatest athletes, and I spent so much time trying to emulate them," she said. "I was absolutely shaping my entire identity trying to be what I thought the sport needed me to be."

Her long-time coach, Louise Sauvage, was in young de Rozario's eyes "almost what we thought an athlete should be." "I thought she was a very Fierce and competitive person, she had an incredible will to win and could overcome any physical barriers that might be there." "As I got older, I started to realise maybe I don't have those qualities – maybe I don't have what it takes to be that person."

At 18, after competing in the 2012 London Paralympics, she had serious doubts about her career path. "I kept going to training, kept doing what I was doing, but my heart definitely wasn't in it, and I felt myself starting to fall out of love with it," she said. Then came the turning point in Glasgow. "I'd always had sport as my identity, and the extreme event that happened at the Commonwealth Games became the catalyst for me to actually figure out how I wanted to live my life," she said.

De Rozario and her coach committed to changing her "entire approach to sport," shifting away from an "extreme focus on success" to other aspects. Instead of solely aiming to win races, they "set smaller goals" and focused on her individual strengths and techniques, she said. She also began to view her losses as a compliment to her competitors rather than a personal failure. Within six months of implementing the new training regimen, she won her first world championship. "[That] changed everything about how I approached the sport. We've stuck with that for the last 10 years."

This change in mindset also influenced how she viewed her body. "There's this idea that, as a disabled person, there's nothing to be proud of physically," she said. "There's this unease… when you're dealing with people who are grateful that they're not in your position or in your body. You internalise [this idea] that your body is not capable or not worthy of value." She has spent her career undoing the harm of those biases. "[As an athlete,] you have to forget that. You have to respect your body and give it the space to work for you," she said.

De Rozario firmly believes that she could not have achieved any of her success without her teammates, mentors, and support staff. "I feel like who I am is almost an amalgamation of everyone who's made me," she said. She recalled the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic marathon, an emotional race that earned her her second gold medal at the Games. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the stadium was empty. "I could hear the commentary coming over the speakers, and I could hear my coach, my doctor, my physio, my engineer – [they] were all there in the stadium," she said. "Because it was so empty, I could hear each of them. It was one of the most surreal experiences."

As she sprinted toward the finish line, she was neck and neck with Swiss racer Manuela Schar. She summoned all her physical and mental strength. "That was a [race] where you have to give everything: sprint finish. The end of a marathon takes everything from you," de Rozario said. She won the race by one second. "That was the first time I'd crossed the finish line and not just felt relief. I was able to feel that pride, that excitement," she said.

The more medals and records de Rozario earns, the less important they become to her. She still loves her sport, but now she loves her life too. "When I started having more success in my career, I started to realise how incredibly unimportant it actually is," she said. "You think that once you achieve this incredible thing that you've spent so many years working and sacrificing for, the reward is that you're going to somehow be a better person or somehow more loved." "I remember winning my first world championship and then waking up the next morning and realising that every single aspect of my life was exactly the same, absolutely nothing had changed."

Now, de Rozario's proudest achievements have nothing to do with her strength, speed, or resilience. "If I think about the things that I'm proud of, it's not the times that I've crossed the finish line first. It's not the gold medals I won in Tokyo, despite [the fact] that I'm incredibly happy about them," she said. "I'm really proud of the person I had to become in order to do that." "I might never race again, I might never win another gold medal. But I can continue to be the person that I've allowed myself to become, and I'm really proud of that person."