"You are terrible": Brutal comment that drove Paralympian to greatness
From a young age, Paralympian Madison de Rozario knew that people treated her differently.
"There's an enormous lack of expectation in what we [people with disabilities] are able to do in sport, in workplaces, in school," she told 9honey.
"It can be the death of potential … I didn't recognise that's what I was experiencing as a young kid."
Born in Perth, Western Australia, De Rozario developed a neurological disease at just four-years-old and has used a wheelchair ever since.
It didn't hold her back from playing sports with her two sisters, and now she is a Paralympic champion with six medals to her name - two golds, three silvers, and a bronze medal.
De Rozario recalled how Frank Ponta – a silver medallist at the first ever Paralympics in 1960, an inaugural Australian Paralympic Hall of Famer, and coach to several Paralympic icons – helped her overcome her early doubts.
"There was a lot of sympathy, a lot of pity, which I didn't recognise as pity at the time," she said.
"And then there was Frank, and he had none of it."
Ponta was part of a generation of para athletes that fought for recognition and support back when most Australia treated them as if they were invisible.
She recalled how the first time Ponta saw her try to play basketball at just 12-years-old, he told her, "you are terrible at this sport".
While it's not exactly what a young athlete would expect to hear, she acknowledged that she was terrible, but Ponta saw her potential.
He dug an old racing wheelchair out of a storage cupboard, strapped her in and told her to go for a spin around the carpark.
"It was way too big for me and I absolutely fell in love with it," she recalled.
Not long after, Ponta was training her multiple times a week even in the toughest conditions.
Not only did he believe in her, he expected her to achieve great things and that expectation changed everything.
"I think he was the first person that didn't treat me carefully," she said.
"He just treated me like an athlete."
A year later, one of Ponta's protegees, Sauvage, took over De Rozario's coaching and helped her nab a last-minute spot at the Beijing Paralympics in 2008.
De Rozario debuted 48 years after Ponta and brought home the silver medal, the same medal he won at his debut.
Ponta sadly died in 2011, a year before De Rozario competed in London, leaving behind a legacy for all para athletes to come.
"I feel so just incredibly lucky that I had one of them in my corner. I didn't even realise it until he was gone," she said.
"I feel so lucky that that's how my career started, with someone who just embodied all of those things that now as a 30-year-old, I hold very, very close."
These memories help fuel her as she prepares for her fifth Paralympics in Paris this month.
This year she hopes to make Ponta proud and be the inspiration to the next generation of para athletes.
"That part still sits so restlessly in me," she said.
Image: DARREN ENGLAND/EPA-EFE/ Shutterstock Editorial