Wheelchair athlete Madison de Rozario and swimmer Brenden Hall will lead out Australia’s Paralympic team at the 2024 Paris Games’ opening ceremony after being named the nation’s flag bearers.
The experienced pair’s roles were announced in Sydney on Friday and they will carry the Australian flag at the event which takes place on Place de la Concorde and the Avenue des Champs Elysées on 28 August.
Track and field star De Rozario has won six Paralympics medals, including two breakthrough golds at the Tokyo Games three years ago, when she won the 800m T53 and the marathon T54. Paris will be her fifth Paralympics appearance, after debuting in Beijing in 2008.
“I love our Paralympic team because of who we are as athletes,” De Rozario said. “But, also, the personalities that we see come out of it, they are some of the best. Those post-race interviews, the interviews leading in, the integrity with which our Paralympians approach sport, it’s unlike anything else.”
De Rozario is coached by fellow wheelchair racer Louise Sauvage, who carried the flag into the Olympic Stadium in Athens at the 2004 Games, and she said it was an odd feeling to join such elite company.
“I’ve seen the people who’ve done it before and it feels odd to be in that same space,” De Rozario said. “Right now it feels like it doesn’t quite fit. But maybe when my career’s done it’ll make a bit more sense than it does right now.”
Hall also has a total of six medals to his name, three of which are gold, and will be competing in the pool at a Paralympics for a swimming record-equalling fifth time in Paris. He had watched Brendan Burkett carry the flag at the Sydney 2000 Games and said he had taken inspiration from that moment.
“That’s when I realised ‘Hey, I’ve got a shot at something here. Let’s have a go at it’. It’s an image that’s always been in my mind,” he said. “I’ve always looked up to the athletes that get up there and carry the flag out there for us. Not once, in my mind, did I ever think I’d reach that status. To be in amongst such an awe-inspiring legendary status crowd is amazing.
“There’s an immense amount of pride being able to represent Australia, so being asked to carry the flag, I’m over the bloody moon.”
Athletics and swimming have been a rich source of medals for Australia’s Paralympians over the years – the two sports have delivered 939 of the nation’s 1,205 medals since the first Games in Rome in 1960.
The Paralympic team’s chef de mission Kate McLoughlin said: “The Australian Paralympic team is blessed with many leaders, incredible role models and brilliant sportspeople, which certainly made it hard to settle on two athletes to be our flag bearers. But that’s just an indication of how highly regarded Brenden and Madi are within and beyond the Australian Paralympic Team.”
