It takes a special strength to be able to make a joke despite trauma.

Curtis McGrath was laid on a stretcher, bleeding and in shock. He had just lost both legs in a mine explosion while serving as a combat engineer in Afghanistan in 2012. As he was carried by his teammates, he joked that he was going to the Paralympics.

“I knew my legs were gone and they weren’t coming back,” he says.

“It was a traumatic day for everyone and if there’s anything I can say to hopefully ease that, that’s why I said it.”

At the time, it was a “promise of hope” rather than a vow to himself. But in the months and years that followed, he realized he had inadvertently predicted his future, and the strength he showed on that life-changing day carried him to Paralympic glory.

McGrath, 36, is now Australia’s top para-canoeist. He won his first Paralympic gold medal in Rio, just four years after his injury, and went on to win two more in Tokyo, in both single and double paddle events.

“The skills I learned in the military helped me to persevere, to keep going when things got tough and to be very resourceful,” he says.

With the Paris Olympics approaching, which begin with the opening ceremony on Wednesday, McGrath knows he is a target as he prepares to defend his title.

“It’s a bit of pressure,” McGrath said. “I just want to represent Australia and do my best. But I want to win. I’m competitive.”

This year’s Games have new meaning for the Queenslander. His wife Rachel gave birth to their son Monty on July 24. He was born with a heart condition and had to undergo open-heart surgery on his first day.

It was hard to leave home, McGrath says, but he wants to make his family proud. “It was pretty tough to leave … but it’s very special and it makes the work and the sacrifices a lot more meaningful.”

In preparation for the Paralympic Games, a new documentary about his rise is being released, Curtis McGrath: Unstoppablewill air on Nine (the owner of this masthead) on Monday.

McGrath will compete towards the end of the Games and says the Australian Paralympic team will be hoping to achieve a similar medal tally to the Olympians, who finished fourth behind the United States, China and Japan.

“The Olympic team did a great job with the medals, especially the girls who took home the bling. The Paralympic team used that as motivation, saw what was possible and … hope to achieve similar results,” he said.

This year’s Games will feature 549 events in 22 sports. Each sport has numerous classifications to accommodate varying degrees of disability.

The Australian team’s chef de mission, Kate McLoughlin, is at the end of a huge planning period.

The team shipped 30,000 uniforms and four six-metre-long containers full of supplies, including sports equipment, massage tables, medical equipment and food, including supplies such as Weet-Bix and Vegemite.

In addition, there are almost 70 athletes who use a wheelchair on a daily basis, in addition to their competition chairs.

“It’s a big logistical exercise because most commercial airlines only take two to four wheelchair users per flight, and we have a wheelchair rugby team of 12 athletes, 10 of whom use a wheelchair every day, and that’s just one team,” McLoughlin said.

She says the Olympic Village, where all the athletes stay, is the most accessible it has been in a long time: every room is wheelchair-friendly.

One challenge will be getting to the venues. During the Olympics, some athletes resorted to the train because the journeys arranged by event organisers were hot and crowded. But for many Paralympians, this is no easy feat.

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“There is only one metro line in Paris that is fully accessible, and it is a good kilometre from the village. It will be a lot harder for our athletes to have a back-up plan.”

About 40 percent of this year’s athletes are Paralympic debutants, McLaughlin says, while the remaining 60 percent are excited to be performing in front of an audience again.

Australia has 160 athletes competing in the Paris event. In addition to McGrath, here is a small taste of the extraordinary list of medal contenders to watch.

Madison de Rosario

Wheelchair racer de Rozario made her Paralympic debut in Beijing 2008 at the age of 14 and has won six Paralympic medals.

She began using a wheelchair after being diagnosed with a neurological condition called transverse myelitis, which affects the spinal cord, at age four.

With three silver medals under her belt after Rio, De Rozario was named Australia’s Paralympic Athlete of the Year in 2021 when she won gold in the 800 metres and marathon in Tokyo, breaking the Paralympic marathon record.

Coached by legendary wheelchair racer Louise Sauvage, Rozario will compete in the marathon, 5000m and 1500m in Paris. She will also be the flag bearer alongside swimmer Brenden Hall at the opening ceremony.

Chris Bond

Steelers captain Chris Bond was just 19 years old in 2005 when he woke from a medically induced coma to find that he had lost his left hand, right fingers and legs. He had survived a severe bacterial infection and acute promyelocytic leukemia.

He has always loved rugby and joined a wheelchair rugby team during his rehabilitation. In 2011 he was in the national team and has become one of the world’s most famous wheelchair rugby players.

The Steelers made history when they became the first wheelchair rugby team to win two Paralympic gold medals (in London and Rio) and a world championship in a four-year period.

In Tokyo the team finished fourth, but in Paris they are favourites for gold.

Daniel Michel

In Rio, Michel became the first athlete to compete in boccia at the Paralympic Games for Australia in 16 years.

Boccia is one of two Paralympic sports that does not have an Olympic counterpart, the other being goalball.

Michel, who has muscular dystrophy, became hooked on the sport as a teenager and won bronze in Tokyo, Australia’s first boccia medal since 1996. The 29-year-old has now looked stronger than ever and has set his sights on winning the country’s first boccia Paralympic gold.

Alexa Leary

Leary was a 19-year-old aspiring triathlon star when a cycling accident in 2021 changed her life. The crash left her with permanent brain damage, blood clots and multiple broken bones.

When Leary learned to walk and talk again, she took up swimming to aid her rehabilitation.

In 2023, she qualified for the Australian para-swimming team. Just over a year later, she has secured a place at her first Paralympics, where she will compete in the 100m and 50m swimming, after winning gold and silver at last year’s world championships.

Vanessa Laag

The 34-year-old reigning Paralympic long jump champion, who won gold in Rio and Tokyo, was a two-time Paralympic athlete for Germany before competing for Australia in 2019.

Low was 15 when she tripped off a busy platform and landed on the tracks of an oncoming train. She survived, but lost her legs and suffered broken bones, as well as head and back injuries.

Only two years later she started athletics and became a member of the German team.

Low became Australian when she met and married Paralympic athlete, skier and sprinter Scott Reardon. After they both competed in Tokyo, Reardon retired to start a family together. Low gave birth to their first son, Matteo, in June 2022.

Low, who is coached by her husband, has made a remarkable return to elite competition, winning gold at this year’s world championships with a jump of 5.29m. Reardon and Matteo will be by her side in Paris.

Tristan Knowles

The captain of Australia’s Rollers wheelchair basketball team is entering his sixth Paralympic Games, making him one of our longest-serving Paralympians. Knowles, 41, has also represented Australia at five world championships, winning a host of medals in both competitions.

Knowles was nine when he was diagnosed with bone cancer. The disease resulted in the amputation of his left leg above the knee. The cancer returned at age 12, and he underwent 22 rounds of chemotherapy and a lung lobectomy. After going into remission, he began playing wheelchair basketball as a teenager.

Ameera Lee

Lee’s journey to the Paralympics began when her 15-year-old son, Huthaifa, encouraged her to take up archery. She decided to give it a try during a school holiday program in 2016 and never looked back.

Lee, a 50-year-old single mother with multiple sclerosis, represented Australia at the 2018 World Championships. She is part of Australia’s largest para-archery team in 40 years.

Nikki Ayers and Jed Altschwager

Ayers and Altschwager, who have known each other since 2017, have both been active in para-rowing at international level for a number of years, but the pairing was not made final until 2023.

The duo won the mixed double sculls world championships last year, improving the world best time by 20 seconds.

Ayers’ journey into para-rowing began after she suffered a serious injury while playing rugby union in 2016. The 33-year-old dislocated her knee, severing an artery and nerve in her right leg. She lost feeling in her foot and underwent 16 operations to reconstruct the knee, remove dead muscle and repair three ligaments. She took up rowing a year after the accident.

Altschwager, 37, lost his lower leg in a workplace accident when a backhoe crushed his left foot. In 2016, after three-time Paralympian Tim Matthews saw a video of him using a rowing machine, he was recruited to take up para-rowing.

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