Kurt Fearnley AO (b. 1981), athlete, won four world titles, three Paralympic gold medals and over 40 marathons in a distinguished twenty-year career. Fearnley was born with a condition that had prevented the development of his spine, yet growing up in Carcoar, New South Wales, he enthusiastically participated in football and other sports alongside his brothers and schoolmates. He took up wheelchair racing at fourteen and was nineteen when he won silver medals in the 800 metres and the 4 x 100 metres relay at the Paralympic Games in Sydney. At the 2004 Athens Paralympics he won gold in the 5000 metres and the marathon, the final five kilometres of which he wheeled with a flat tyre. Between 2004 and 2014 he amassed four World Championship gold medals, one Commonwealth Games gold medal, and another Paralympic gold; plus three victories in the Chicago marathon, one in the London marathon and five in the New York marathon. In 2011 he crawled the Kokoda Track to raise money for mental health charities and was part of the crew that took line honours in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Fearnley captained the Australian team at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio and won his second Commonwealth marathon gold at the Gold Coast Games in 2018. An inspirational spokesperson on disability issues, Fearnley was named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2018 and was the 2019 New South Wales Australian of the Year.
