Samantha Schmidt

BIOGRAPHY

Samantha Schmidt was a thrower from the very start when she was aged just five-years-old. She progressed through Little Athletics and then senior athletics at Bundaberg. Set to compete in 2020 at the Paralympics she was disappointed in the postponement of the Games and found the COVID lockdown period tough. She was back on target for the delayed Paralympics setting an Australian discus record in the summer of 2021.  At the Games in Tokyo she placed sixth with a throw of 30.26m.

Last summer (2023) she was in top form, twice exceeding the Australian record she set in 2021. Her best was 34.26m in March. In June she was named in her second Australian team, for the World Para Athletics Championships in Paris 2023 where she competed in the F38 discus throw placing fifth with a throw of 34.03m. 

She started 2024 with seventh place at the World Championships in Kobe Japan throwing 32.98m. She was then selected for her second Paralympics in Paris in 2024.

Indigenous woman: from the Wakawaka and Gubbi Gubbi people from the South-Eastern Queensland region…Australian Records: holds all open F38 shot/discus/javelin records and many junior records – 12 in total.

@ 22 Aug 2024 david.tarbotton@athletics.org.au