The Don: Kurt Fearnley uses award to deliver message of hope
It would have been easy for Kurt Fearnley to just thank the right people and mouth a few polite platitudes after becoming the first athlete with a disability to win The Don Award.
STRONG MESSAGE: Newcastle champion Kurt Fearnley is the first athlete with a disability to be awarded The Don for Australia's most inspiring sportsperson. Picture: Jonathan Carroll
But Fearnley doesn't do easy.
This is the man who took time out from a peerless career as a wheelchair racer to crawl the Kokoda Track.
He has also found time to be part of a winning Sydney to Hobart crew.
The proud Novovastrian’s racing CV includes three Paralympic gold medals, seven world titles and 35 major marathon victories.
But the 37-year-old has never lost sight of what is really important - and how his sporting prowess gives him a unique platform to advocate for people with disabilities.
So it should really come as no surprise that Fearnley's acceptance speech to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame function on Thursday night was about more than sport.
"I have to point back behind me to the generations of proud men and women with disabilities who allowed me to become the person and athlete that you see fit to receive this award," he said. "An athlete whose sport has been born out of the back fields of rehabilitation hospitals. That was created by men and women who had the desire to see not only what was physically possible but was humanly possible.
“I've heard the stories of Paralympic forebears who speak about losing friends, who felt too much shame in their experience with disability - and that is within our own community. There was too much shame and there wasn't enough hope.
"So our sport was born out of that hope. Hope that somebody can be judged by substance, not image. That the difference that we each hold can be celebrated and not used to be segregated."
Fearnley was born with sacral agenesis, with doctors believing he would not live for longer than a week.
But he defied that prognosis, playing a variety of sports while growing up in the small NSW town of Carcoar before choosing to focus on wheelchair racing.
Fearnley wasn't present for the annual SAHOF function in Melbourne, having stayed in the US after racing in the Chicago marathon last weekend.
But his speech still held an audience of Australia's sporting greats and luminaries from the worlds of politics and big business spellbound with its messages of hope and inclusion.
"Through the medium of sport that's what our movement represents - hope," he said. "Hope, that if sport can adjust to include those with disabilities, maybe the community can follow.”
Fearnley also called for people with disabilities to be given more opportunities in sports administration and governance, as well as on the fields of play.
“Let's lead the way. We won't regret it," he said. "There is strength and substance in this community.
“Sir Donald Bradman once said that athletes who receive recognition, they also have a duty to mankind. Well I am honoured to receive this recognition and I am honoured by The Don Award and I will do my best to be worthy of it."