Logan Powell became a below-the-knee amputee when he was 18-months-old due to an accident involving a ride-on lawn mower. He took up swimming at the insistence of his mother, who hoped it would help him to build his upper body strength.
Although he did not enjoy swimming initially, Logan began competing when he was nine-years-old and debuted for Australia three years later at the 2011 Arafura Games in Darwin. There he competed in the 50m breaststroke and 100m freestyle, backstroke and butterfly multi-class events.
2013 was a stand-out year for Logan. He achieved three gold, one silver and three bronze medals at the GHSF Australian Age Multi-class Championships in Adelaide, and at the Australian School Swimming Championships he was named the Multi-class Swimmer of the Meet. He took home two gold medals, six silver and one bronze, and became the new national multi-class record holder in the 100m backstroke and 200m individual medley events.
Identified by Swimming Australia as an athlete to watch, Logan relocated to the Sunshine Coast in 2013 to train under renowned coach Jan Cameron, who leads the prestigious high-performance Paralympic swimming program at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
At the 2016 Australian Swimming Championships, Logan competed in ten events, including the 200m freestyle multi-class, 4x50m freestyle relay multi-class and 100m backstroke multi-class, in which he placed 4th, 5th and 6th respectively. On the back of these results, Swimming Australia announced later that week that Logan had qualified for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio.
Making his Paralympic debut in Rio, Logan’s sole aim was to make a final. Competing in three events, he realised his goal when he made the final in the 400m freestyle and 100m backstroke, placing seventh and eighth respectively. Logan also competed in the 100m butterfly but did not progress to the finals.
Logan is inspired by Brenden Hall, a Paralympic dual gold medallist with whom he struck up a friendship in the waiting room of their prosthetist before he began swimming competitively. He says that standing beside Brenden behind the starting blocks in a 100m backstroke final is his greatest sporting moment to date.
Motivated by rivalry with his two older brothers, Logan champions an active lifestyle outside the pool too. Since his selection for the Rio Games, he has not used his dirt bike for fear of injury, but is also an avid bodyboarder and soccer player.
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