Earlier than Paris 2024, Australia had solely ever gained two Paralympic boccia medals – each of them bronze. And between Sydney 2000 and Rio 2016, there was not a single Australian consultant within the sport.
Nevertheless it was at all times probably that this 12 months’s Video games could be a watershed second for Australian boccia.
Dan Michel got here into Paris because the world’s number-one ranked males’s BC3 participant, Jamieson Leeson was quantity two within the ladies’s, and collectively they have been red-hot combined pairs favourites.
So, it was unsurprising that Australia’s two biggest boccia gamers delivered Australia’s biggest Paralympic boccia outcome, with a silver medal every of their particular person occasions, though they bowed out of the combined occasion within the quarterfinals.
Michel and Leeson’s success each displays boccia’s current development in Australia and foreshadows its additional growth, which can be important for the development of a extra inclusive sporting future.
A sport designed with inclusion in thoughts
Boccia is particularly designed for athletes with a excessive degree of bodily impairment and takes inspiration from sports activities resembling garden bowls and bocce. It’s strategically dense and stuffed with angles and nuance.
Dan Michel and ramp operator Ash Maddern on their method to a silver medal in Paris. (Getty Pictures: Michael Reaves)
In Leeson and Michel’s BC3 class, the balls enter the court docket by way of a ramp, which is managed by the athlete’s devoted operator.
Rising up, Leeson and Michel say they struggled to search out sports activities they might participate in and excel at.
As Dan Michel instructed ABC Sport earlier this 12 months, discovering boccia at 15 was one thing of a eureka second.
“I rapidly noticed that it was for me and realised there was apparently an enormous pathway,” he mentioned.
“And for me, that was actually all I wished; a possibility to play a sport and to have that chance to, if I used to be adequate, go and play for my nation on the highest degree.”
Hopefully, the subsequent era of boccia stars is not going to have to attend till their mid-teens to search out the game, with grassroots tournaments and “come and check out” days turning into extra commonplace throughout the nation.
Now in its eleventh 12 months, the NSW Main and Secondary College Boccia Championships is billed as the most important competitors of its type on the planet.
This 12 months’s event featured greater than 3,400 rivals from 470 colleges throughout the state, a far cry from the 40 colleges that took half in its inaugural version.
Leeson is a veteran of the competitors, and solely weeks earlier than she grew to become Australia’s first-ever feminine boccia medallist, she attended the event’s mid-August remaining at Sydney Olympic Park.
And after returning dwelling from her Paris success, Leeson had a transparent message.
Jamieson Leeson desires extra individuals get entangled with boccia. (Getty Pictures: Michael Reeves)
“If you happen to do not assume there is a sport accessible for you, strive boccia,” she mentioned.
“It is the perfect sport on the market. It is essentially the most accessible sport on the market and I extremely suggest it as a result of I did not comprehend it was going to be for me till I gave it a crack.”
Immeasurable good for a extra inclusive sporting future
In Australia, individuals with incapacity take part in sport at a decrease price than the remainder of the inhabitants, and that price is even decrease for individuals with a major bodily impairment.
As one of many two Paralympic sports activities that shouldn’t have an Olympic counterpart (the opposite is goalball), boccia is a rarity as a result of it’s designed particularly for athletes with excessive ranges of bodily impairment.
The Worldwide Paralympic Committee has declared it the “fastest-growing sport throughout the Paralympic motion”, which was mirrored within the variety of the athletes competing in Paris.
A considerable development in Asia noticed international locations from the continent make up 4 of the top-five positions on the boccia medal desk. This was distinct from the way it regarded in Tokyo, with Europe dominating the standings.
Again dwelling, the game has seen a participation explosion in recent times.
From fewer than 70 registered gamers in January 2019, there have been 493 in September 2023.
Now, with two freshly minted Paralympic silver medallists and the sport on the Australian sporting radar like by no means earlier than, that development appears sure to proceed.
