Richard Nicholson

Richard has been involved in sport since age 10, first beginning in archery then at the request of a high school PE teacher he began training and competing in mainstream gymnastics. Due to his great upper body strength and light bodyweight, Richard achieved good success in gymnastics. Unfortunately the better he became the less competitive he was because he was forced to land onto his hands and knees constituting a ‘fall’ and therefore a minus score of 0.5.

Moving on from gymnastics after seven years and a couple of years coaching, Richard began in disability specific sport and took up powerlifting where he enjoyed very good success both nationally and internationally. Richard won international medals at European Championships, Commonwealth Games and a silver medal at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics where he became the only Australian to benchpress over three times his bodyweight to clinch the win.

In 2002, after eight years of powerlifting, Richard changed tack again to track and field where he was successful as part of a wheelchair racing relay team in the Athens Paralympics in the 4 × 100m winning a silver medal and breaking the current Australian record. In Athens, he also competed in the Pentathlon and individual 100m, 400m and the 4 × 100 relay.

He has also achieved success nationally as a seated discus thrower. He represented Australia at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games in the seated discus competition placing a credible 5th.

Since then, Richard has again focused solely on wheelchair racing and represented Australia at the 2006 IPC Athletics World Championships in Assen, Netherlands. In 2007, Richard has competed in marathons in NZ, Korea, Switzerland and the famous NY marathon. Richard hopes to be selected for his fourth Paralympic team for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics.