Chris
Bond

Before Chris Bond was an international wheelchair rugby star, he was a 19-year-old battling acute promyelocytic leukaemia. He survived, but lost his left hand, right fingers and legs below the knees to a bacterial infection.

Chris is now one of the best 3.5 wheelchair rugby players in the world. On debut at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, he helped lead the Australian wheelchair rugby team, the Steelers, to their first Paralympic gold medal, and matched this effort in 2014 at the International Wheelchair Rugby Federation (IWRF) Wheelchair Rugby World Championship in Odense, Denmark, where they won their first world title.

Chris made history once again when the Steelers became the first wheelchair rugby team to win two consecutive Paralympic gold medals and a World Championship title in a four-year period. As the odds-on favourites to win gold at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, they did not disappoint. They set up a gold medal showdown with the USA, and in a match that will be remembered by fans for years to come, defeated their perennial rivals 59-58 in a double-overtime thriller.

The Steelers’ six-year reign at major tournaments came to an end at the 2018 IWRF Wheelchair Rugby World Championship in Sydney, NSW. Despite an unbeaten run to the gold medal match and a home-court advantage, they made an uncharacteristic and decisive error with 90 seconds to play to fall to Japan 62-61.

Chris was selected for his third Paralympic campaign at Tokyo 2020, where he played his 200th match for Australia. The Steelers’ would go on to just miss out on a medal when they lost to Japan 52-60 in the bronze medal game. The fourth place finished ended the team’s nine-year reign as Paralympic champions, and it was the first time in 17 years that the team didn’t win a medal.