Eliza Ault Connell

ACHIEVEMENTS

Whilst the road to Tokyo 2020 has been long and winding for every member of the Australian athletics team, Eliza’s was longer than most. After 17 years, she returns to the bright lights of the Paralympic stage. Her program for Tokyo was a different with a wide range of events – 100m, 400m and marathon. She made the final of the sprints placing eight in the 100m (17.12) and seventh in the 400m (56.54). In the gruelling marathon she recorded 1:52.26 for 13th place.

+ + + + +

Eliza Ault-Connell had a great passion for sport, involved with horse riding, netball and basketball in her teens. A week after she turned 16, in 1997, she woke with a sore throat, but during the day her health deteriorated as meningococcal bacteria attacked her body. "I went from being fine that morning to being on life support that night," Ault-Connell said. "I fell into a coma that night and I had my legs amputated on the second night of the coma." Eliza remained in hospital for six months. In 1998 she received prosthetic legs to compete in athletics and competed in the T44 class (double below-knee amputees). But it was challenging for the teenager. "I had to stop running because I had a problem in the bone in the stump," she says. "I'd do a hard training session, it would swell up and I wouldn't be able to walk. So, I switched to wheelchair racing."
She burst onto the international scene in 2002, winning a bronze medal in the women’s 800m (1:54.20) at the Commonwealth Games, before upgrading to silver at that year’s World Championships, in the women’s 400m T54 (1:01.50).

The Paralympic podium eluded Eliza in 2004 – not so, the Olympic podium, with wheelchair racing appearing as a demonstration sport in Athens. In what proved to be a nail-biting fight to the finish for two Aussie superstars, Eliza crossed just ahead of Louise Sauvage for silver in the women’s 800m (1:53.84).
A silver and bronze medal again had Eliza’s name on it at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, and 2006 IPC World Championships, respectively, clinching second place in the women’s 800m T54 (1:49.62) on home soil, and third in the women’s 800m T54.

After hanging up her proverbial studs in 2008 to start a family with Paralympic gold medallist and teammate Kieran Ault-Connell (together, they have three children), it was a throwaway comment by her daughter – “You used to be so cool when you did wheelchair racing” – that inspired her decision to resurrect her sporting career.

It was as if she never left. Eliza won a silver medal in the women’s marathon T54 (1:44:13) at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. At the 2019 World Para-Athletics Championships in Dubai, she was terrific, competing in eight races and every track event from 100m to 5000m. She won bronze in the women’s 400m T54 (55.30) was top-6 in four of the events. 
She successfully trained and compete through the COVID effected years of 2020 and 2021 with the goal of returning to the Paralympic arena, 17 years after her debut in Athens in 2004.

@1 Oct 21 david.tarbotton@athletics.org.au