Josh Hanlon is set to compete across all five para alpine skiing disciplines – downhill, super‑G, alpine combined, giant slalom and slalom at the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games. Photo: Josh Chooka Hanlon/Facebook.
The 2026 Winter Paralympic Games opens in Verona tonight and Australia has sent a team of 12 athletes across four sports, among them four competitors whose journeys began much closer to home in southern NSW and the ACT.
They include a grain farmer from near Wagga Wagga who survived a catastrophic harvester accident, a Weethalle kid who once dreamed of playing AFL, a Canberra sporting legend returning to the Paralympics stage at 52 after surviving cancer three times and a Navy sailor from Bruce who learned to ski only four years ago and now fires a biathlon rifle guided by sound.
First is Aaron McCarthy, a grain farmer from The Rock just south of Wagga who survived a catastrophic harvester accident in 2021.
He had gone out to harvest grain when his leg was caught in machinery and traumatically amputated, and in the chaos managed to tourniquet the wound himself and call for help – a decision that likely saved his life.
Within months he was back playing sport, first wheelchair tennis and then adaptive snow sports after attending a Disabled Wintersport Australia clinic.
In 2024, McCarthy and his wife Tahnee moved their young family to Jindabyne for the winter season so he could train seriously on snow.
The gamble paid off: competing in Europe during his first international campaign, McCarthy stunned more experienced rivals by winning the European Cup overall in his classification.
A collarbone injury at a qualifying World Cup event in Canada left his Paralympics selection hanging by a thread, but after being awarded a bipartite invitation, the Riverina farmer will line up in para snowboard, competing in the snowboard cross and banked slalom events at Cortina.
From another tiny Riverina town – Weethalle (population 300) – comes Josh Hanlon who once dreamed of playing AFL.
He spent four years in the GWS Giants Academy as a teenager before a streptococcus A infection in 2018 sent him into toxic shock and sepsis, resulting in the loss of both legs below the knee and his right hand at the wrist.
Less than a year after leaving hospital, he tried sit-skiing for the first time and coaches quickly recognised his potential.
By the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics, he was already representing Australia, finishing sixth in the men’s slalom and earning Paralympics Australia’s Rookie of the Year award.
Four years later, Hanlon arrives in Cortina as one of the busiest athletes on the Australian program, set to compete across all five para alpine skiing disciplines – downhill, super‑G, alpine combined, giant slalom and slalom.
Then there is Michael Milton, an Ainslie local and one of Australia’s most decorated Winter Paralympians.
Milton won Australia’s first Winter Paralympic gold medal in 1992 and swept all four alpine events at Salt Lake City in 2002, setting a world speed-skiing record of 213.65 km/h along the way.
Since retiring after Torino in 2006, he has battled oesophageal cancer in 2007 and bowel cancer in 2023, and now runs a Harry Potter merchandise store in Fyshwick with his wife Penni.
Yet last August, while skiing at Thredbo, the competitive instinct returned and now, aged 52, not even a fractured femur suffered weeks before selection stopped him.
Returning almost two decades after his last Paralympics start, Milton will compete in giant slalom and slalom, and Paralympics Australia describes him as a genuine medal contender.
Finally, Taryn Dickens, a serving Royal Australian Navy (RAN) able seaman from Bruce in the ACT, brings a path unlike any other.
Diagnosed with cone-rod dystrophy – a degenerative retinal condition – in 2019 she had already built a formidable sporting resume, competing in endurance cycling, rugby league, kickboxing and desert ultramarathons.
Seeking something new, she first stepped onto cross-country skis in May 2022 at a Navy biathlon camp and two weeks later completed the 42-kilometre Kangaroo Hoppet at Falls Creek.
Biathlon – which requires stopping mid-race to fire a rifle at a tiny target – presented an obvious challenge, but Dickens learned to shoot by sound using an adapted rifle that emits audio cues.
Training out of Canberra with guide Lynn Maree Cullen from West Wodonga, she placed second at a Para Nordic Continental Cup event in Canada late last year.
In Italy she will compete in para biathlon and para cross-country skiing, marking Australia’s return to the disciplines collectively known as the Para Nordic sports at the Winter Paralympics for the first time in two decades.
When they compete
Aaron McCarthy — Para Snowboard, The Rock NSW
Snowboard cross: 7–8 March
Banked slalom: 14 March
Cortina Para Snowboard Park
Josh Hanlon – Para Alpine Skiing (Sitting), Weethalle NSW
Downhill: 7 March
Super‑G: 8 March
Alpine combined: 10 March
Giant slalom: 11 March
Slalom: 13 March
Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo
Michael Milton – Para Alpine Skiing (Standing), Ainslie ACT
Giant slalom: 11 March
Slalom: 13 March
Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo
Taryn Dickens – Para Biathlon and Cross-Country, Bruce ACT (guide: Lynn Maree Cullen, West Wodonga)
Biathlon sprint: 9 March
Cross-country sprint: 11 March
Biathlon individual: 12 March
Cross-country sprint pursuit: 14 March
Tesero Cross-Country Stadium, Val di Fiemme
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympic Games run until 15 March and are broadcast in Australia on Channel 9 and 9Now. The full schedule, including event times, can be seen here.
Original Article published by Edwina Mason on About Regional.
