Paddy Walsh launches into the long jump pit at the NZ track and field champs earlier this year. Photo / mtsportsphoto
New NZ Para track and field team member Paddy Walsh doesn’t see her disability as a disadvantage: ‘It’s given me opportunities I wouldn’t have had if I had two feet,’ she tells Angela Walker.
Paddy Walsh often forgets she has a disability.
“When someone points it out, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I am missing a foot’,” she says.
But the Para athlete doesn’t see herself as disabled and believes there simply isn’t anything she can’t do. And she’s got the ultimate proof – an identical twin, Georgie, who she’s always kept pace with.
“It’s easy to compare us,” Walsh says. “We’ve always been in the same sports teams together. I’m literally the same. There’s never been much of a difference in our athleticism.”
Except Walsh’s sporting skills have seen her receive a black singlet.
Last month she was surprised to be named in the eight-strong New Zealand team to compete at the 2025 World Para Athletics Championships, in New Delhi in September.
Her ongoing preparation for the T64 long jump event will include adapting to a specialised prosthetic long jump blade – with the help of her coach and New Zealand teammate Mitch Joynt.
But unlike Joynt (Paralympian #234), Walsh has always struggled to finance her blades – even though they are both classified as lower limb amputees. Joynt is eligible for ACC funding having lost his lower leg as the result of an accident. Walsh lost her right lower limb because of a non-accident-related medical condition and has no financial support.
Walsh is philosophical about the unequal situation she and her coach find themselves in.
“We have a good laugh about it,” she says.
“He gets a new blade once every two years or so. I’m a bit jealous but that’s okay. No hard feelings,” she chuckles.
And with the help of generous donors, Walsh has managed to fund her next blade, an event-specific one currently in transit from the Netherlands.
Walsh was born 21 years ago missing a fibula in her right lower limb – a non-hereditary condition (fibular hemimelia) that didn’t affect her identical twin. Having undergone amputation at the age of 4, she can only ever recall having one foot, though she does remember having to learn to walk again on her first prosthetic limb.
Walsh went on to do far more than walk during her childhood, playing a range of sports with enormous determination.
“I tried really hard to get good at certain sports,” she says. “I guess I had a point to make. Kids don’t come across many people with one foot, and I think they underestimated me.”
It wasn’t just her peers who sometimes misjudged her. Walsh has never forgotten the time a class photo was being set up by a school photographer.
“I was supposed to be on the top bench, but the photographer said: ‘I don’t know if you can get up there?’ And I was like: ‘I can get up there!’ But he was saying, ‘No, go help her’. And I thought, ‘Is this what he thinks? That I can’t even get up two stairs?’.”
While Walsh more than held her own in sports like volleyball and netball growing up, she ironically hated athletics at school and would try anything to get out of it. Running was especially challenging because her everyday prosthesis provided no feedback.
“It has no spring. It’s like walking with a dead leg,” she explains.
But all that changed in her early teens when the Starship Foundation gifted her a blade specially designed for activity. At a subsequent ‘have a go’ day, she was spotted by coach Hamish Meacham who noticed her talent and suggested she take up athletics.
“I’m really grateful he got me into athletics,” Walsh says of her first coach, who she trained with until he moved out of Auckland.
“It’s such a big part of my life now.”
Walsh has an exceptionally full life that sees her juggle commerce studies at the University of Auckland with training six days a week at AUT Millennium – plus a Sunday retail job at Player Sports.
Her determination and discipline, she says, is a product of her life experiences, and she’s grateful for it.
“I don’t think I’d have the same drive if I didn’t have my disability,” she says.
“In fact, I generally don’t feel like my disability is a disadvantage. It doesn’t make my life any harder and it’s given me opportunities I wouldn’t have had if I had two feet, because I definitely wouldn’t have done athletics.”
Initially a sprinter, Walsh added long jump to her repertoire two years ago and has been on a rapid learning curve since. She says mastering each phase of the event has been daunting, from jumping off her blade to staying in the air and learning to land optimally.
“The whole long jump experience can be intimidating,” the New Zealand T64 record holder says.
“Even now, sometimes when I have a really good take-off and get height in the air, I almost bail out of a good jump because it’s actually quite scary.
“I had to learn to overcome the feeling and hold the position because my right leg just wanted to immediately pull forward and land early.”
Walsh also has to factor in the size and shape of her blade during landing.
“The big curve on the blade is detrimental to my landing,” she explains. “I have to get my leg that much higher otherwise it takes 20 to 30 centimetres off my jump.”
Walsh credits Joynt with helping her make such rapid progress in the event. As well as coaching her, Joynt – who won the bronze medal in the 200m T64 at the previous two world champs – is the athlete Walsh admires most in the world.
“I look up to Mitch because I know his story,” she says.
“It’s unbelievable how hardworking he is. The way he trains is how I want to train. It helps motivate me.”
Walsh says she is a little nervous at the prospect of her first world championships, and first overseas trip beyond Australia, but feels comforted knowing Joynt will be there as her coach, teammate and mentor.
“He’s got a lot of wisdom and can really guide me and help me get the best experience that I can,” she says.
Joynt is similarly delighted that Walsh made the team.
“I’ve known Paddy probably a decade,” he says.
“I trained with her and now I coach her, and I consider her a friend. No one deserves this more than Paddy and I’m really stoked for her.”
Walsh and Joynt will be joined at the world champs by promising debutants Michael Whittaker and Sarah James – as well as experienced Paralympians Anna Grimaldi, Holly Robinson, Danielle Aitchison and Will Stedman.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.