A plane seat next to Kochie changed his life. Now he wants to win Paris Paralympics

If not for sport, and a chance meeting on a plane with David Koch, gold medal hopeful Rheed McCracken would struggle to fathom where he would be today.

“Growing up with a disability, I was probably a little bit nervous and anxious to be involved in sport, about what people thought of me, how people looked at me,” McCracken says.

“It wasn’t until I found a little bit of a competitive nature … that has now progressed into making it my life.”

McCracken, born with cerebral palsy, says sport changed his life.

“It really did. When I think about how long I’ve been doing sport, I honestly couldn’t tell you what I would be doing without it.

“It’s given me opportunities I never thought I’d ever have. It moulded me into who I am.”

‘A bit too skinny’, a daunting year, and a fourth Paralympics chance

Watching Kurt Fearnley at the top of the podium in the Beijing Paralympics wheelchair marathon proved the catalyst for McCracken’s rise from small-town dreamer to the cusp of his fourth Games.

The Queensland wheelchair racer has won three silver medals and two bronze since making his Olympics debut at London 2012, when he was just 15.

A fortuitous meeting two years earlier, sitting next to television personality Koch as he returned from a junior development program, accelerated his path to the top.

“I just remember him saying ‘you’re a bit too skinny, you’re a bit small’,” McCracken laughs.

“He introduced me to Kurt Fearnley in Sydney and that fuelled that fire a little bit. I told him this is who I watch, this is what I wanted to do, my idol was Kurt and told him I was trying to be a wheelchair racer.

“He is someone that I have so much respect for, he has supported me to this day. Any time there’s anything happening that comes up, he’s supportive of me.

“It’s one of those moments where you go ‘if I hadn’t been on that flight, if I hadn’t sat next to him’.

“I believe honestly I would have found my way into wheelchair racing and the Paralympics no matter what … but that leg-up definitely helped fast-track that.”

‘My parents couldn’t afford to put me into a racing wheelchair.’

The McCracken family began fundraising around their regional Queensland city of Bundaberg for a racing chair of his own. Years later, he had taken that chair to London and made the podium in the 100-metre and 200-metre T34 classification sprint.

Now, while bracing to learn if he makes the cut for Paris, McCracken admits a confronting 2023 threatened to end his dream, with a disappointing seventh in the 800 metres T34 final at the World Championships and eighth in the 100 metres T34 final.

“[It was] probably the most testing year I’ve had as an athlete,” the 27-year-old says.

“There were personal things off the track, and how I was handling those things at the time was probably not the best.

He’s cast that chapter aside, thriving at the Dubai Athletics Grand Prix in February.

“I worked really hard on myself off the track to be better, and I think that’s also transferred to my training. I had a lot of changes last year in life, and just working with my performance team better this year has helped a lot.”

“Last year was very challenging, but this year is new.

“How I approached the final in Tokyo is going to be completely different to how I approach it in Paris.”

Alarming decline fuels compelling message

McCracken still harbours a desire to reach the Brisbane 2032 Games – when he will be 35.

But he is alarmed at the decline in grassroots participation in sport, a trend that threatens to strip Australia of its next generation of talent.

Allianz Australia research has found one-third of Australian children wish to stop playing sport, with one-quarter withdrawing by age 15, and half of those with disabilities by age 11.

Time and cost-of-living pressures have been identified as causes, inspiring the Allianz Grassroots Champions campaign, for which McCracken is an ambassador.

The campaign, which aims to inspire grassroots teams to stay in sport and strive towards the Olympics and Paralympics, started by taking young athletes to Sydney’s Allianz Stadium on July 4 so they could experience how it feels to compete with the sound of a nation behind them.

The federal government has unveiled plans to spend $283 million in funding the nation’s elite Olympic and Paralympic athletes over the next two years.

This is a promising step, McCracken says, but as competitors consider abandoning their pursuits for financial reasons, greater support is needed.

“We need to make it easier and more accessible for kids to be able to continue in sport because it’s important, not just the benefits of doing sport but also the social aspects of it: the teamwork, the leadership it can build into your life in the future.

“My parents couldn’t afford to put me into a racing wheelchair. I was supported by the Bundaberg community … without that, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I was doing.

“We need to support the grassroots. To commit to being an Olympian or Paralympian is a massive thing – it’s dedication through your whole life.

“Not every kid needs to aim for that, but it’s more just to be able to be involved and want to be involved in it – sport can be such a powerful thing in someone’s life.”