Scott
Reardon

Scott Reardon is one of the greatest T63 athletes in the world.

Before he was a sprinter, though, he was a 12-year-old digging holes at his family farm in the NSW country town of Temora. Standing on the frame of a post hole digger, Scott’s shoelace was untied and it caught in the power take-off shaft of a tractor, severing his right leg.

Incredibly – and perhaps in a sign of his success to come – Scott relearned how to walk in just a week-and-a-half.

His meteoric rise to fame on the track dates back to 2009, when he relocated to the ACT to train under esteemed coach Iryna Dvoskina at the Australian Institute of Sport. After first representing Australia at the 2011 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics World Championships in Christchurch, New Zealand, Scott won a Paralympic silver medal in the men’s 100m T42 at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

He achieved his first international gold medal in 2013 at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Lyon, France, and as the reigning world champion in the men’s 100m T42, Scott was the man to beat at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. He held off a late charge by Richard Whitehead (GBR) to win his first Paralympic gold medal – in record time, too – to be nominated for Paralympics Australia’s 2016 Male Paralympian of the Year award.

At his final Paralympic Games at Tokyo 2020, Scott was able to finish with a time of 0:12.08 in the 100m T63 to qualify for the final, despite slipping at the start of the race. In the final, he ran a time of 0:12.43 to place fifth overall.

The three-time world champion is married to German-born Paralympic Champion Vanessa Low. The two both represented Australia together at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, before Scott retired from sport to start a family.