Kate Wilson (swimmer)

Katie (Kate) Wilson (born 4 June 1998) is an Australian Paralympic swimmer. She represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.[1]

Kate Wilson
2016 Australian Paralympic team portrait
Personal information
Full nameKatie Wilson
Nationality Australia
Born (1998-06-04) 4 June 1998
Sport
SportSwimming
ClassificationsS6
ClubKingscliff Swimming Club
CoachDwain Fitzsimmons

Personal

Wilson was born on 4 June 1998 with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism that affects the upper and lower limbs.[2] She is the oldest of three children and has one sister and one brother.[2] For primary school, she attended St Anthony's Catholic Primary School in Kingscliff where she has lived for the majority of her life. For high school she attended Mount Saint Patrick's College Mount Saint Patrick College in Murwillumbah and undertook her HSC in 2016.[3] As of 2018 she is undertaking a Bachelor of Vision Science/Master of Optometry at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Her grandfather Kevin Wilson played for the St George Dragons 1952 to 1955[4] and her uncle Martin O'Connell played for the Penrith Panthers from 1999 to 2001.[2][5] Her mother Susan Wilson was also a member of the Australian University Netball Team.

Swimming

Wilson took swimming as a child at the advice of a paediatrician and has been swimming all her life. At the age of 13, she began to take swimming more seriously. She is classified as a S6 swimmer. She is 129 cm tall and just qualifies for S6 limit of 130 cm.[6] In 2012, she attended an AIS "Road to Rio" camp for junior developing swimmers that provided her with the motivation and the dream to strive for the 2016 Paralympics.[2] At the 2013 Australian Swimming Championships she won a silver medal in the Women's 50m Breaststroke. In 2016, after three years, she recorded a personal best time in the same event and won a bronze medal.[2] From 2013 to 2016 she trained Kingscliff Swimming Club under the guidance of Coach Dwain Fitzsimmons.

She made her international debut at the Berlin Open Swimming Championships in June 2016. At the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, she competed in four individual events and one relay. Her individual events included the women's 50m freestyle S6, 100m freestyle S6, 100m breaststroke SB6 and 200m individual medley SM6. She was also a heat swimmer for the 4x50 freestyle relay 20pts. She made the final of the 100m Breaststroke and placed 7th.[7]

In 2017 she was awarded Sportsperson of the Year for the Tweed Shire Council.

References
  1. "Australian Paralympic Swimming Team announced". Australian Paralympic Committee News, 1 August 2016. Retrieved 1 August 2016.
  2. "Kate Wilson". Australian Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  3. "Mount St Patrick College Newsletter Marc 2016" (PDF). Mount St Patrick College website. Retrieved 1 August 2016.
  4. "Kevin Wilson". Rugby League Project website. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  5. "Marty O'Conell". Rugby League Project. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  6. McKenzie, Daniel (20 May 2016). "Paralympic dreaming for Tweed swimmer". Tweed Daily News. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  7. "Kate Wilson". Rio Official Results Paralympics. Rio Paralympics 2016. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
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