Eve Rimmer

The role of trailblazing Para-athlete and disability rights advocate Eve Rimmer in helping usher in a greater period of acceptance for disability sport cannot be understated.

During an outstanding international career, the fiercely determined mother-of-two snared 14 Paralympic medals (11 in athletics) including eight gold medals and such was her status, at the height of her success she was a household name in New Zealand.

Born Eva Davies in Whanganui in 1937 and raised one of four siblings in Edgecumbe in the Bay of Plenty she showed great natural athletic ability as a youngster. Setting the school long jump record and also starring as a sprint champion, Eve, as she was better known, was ear-marked as an athlete of some promise.

However, at the age of 15 her life was to turn upside down following a serious car crash. On a way to a dance with three friends the car she was travelling in skidded and rolled near a bridge over the Whakatane River. Pinned on her back underneath the car she sustained a multiple fracture dislocation to several vertebrae, which crushed her spinal cord.

Despite undergoing surgery, she was left paralysed from the waist down. Showing typical tenacity, she refused to accept a lifetime in a wheelchair and after undergoing 13 months of rehabilitation she learned to walk with callipers and crutches.

Boasting great drive and determination over time she adjusted to life as a paraplegic. She learned to play piano and guitar but her true passion was sport and she found freedom through swimming and learning to kayak.

In 1959 she married Kelvin Rimmer and the couple had two daughters, Wendy and Julie. However, it was not as a swimmer or kayaker where Eve was ultimately to find her greatest success – it was as an athlete.

After reading a story in the Rotorua Daily Post about the rising paraplegic sporting movement and the call to form a local sports club from future New Zealand Paralympic team captain Jim Savage, Eve re-engaged with athletics for the first time since school. Aged in her late 20s she began training, impressing at the 1968 National Paraplegic Games in Auckland. Later that year, and under the coaching guidance of Ray Gurren, she successfully qualified for the 1968 Paralympic Games (then known as the International Paraplegic Games) in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The only woman selected on a New Zealand team, which also comprised 14 men, she excelled in the throws, winning javelin gold, shot put silver and discus bronze as well as silver in the women’s 50m freestyle to become the sole Kiwi medallist in Tel Aviv.

As a tragic back story to her success, her father died the day before the Games, although she was not told until the competition was over.

Success continued four years later at the 1972 Paralympic Games staged in Heidelberg, Germany. Now a stronger more experienced athlete, Eve secured gold medals in the pentathlon – by a margin of nearly 1400pts – and shot put, as well as silver medals in the javelin and discus.

The 1976 Toronto Games proved the most successful of her lengthy and much heralded career. In a clear display of her dominance at that time, the New Zealander brought home a quartet of gold medals; winning pentathlon, discus, shot and javelin. The Games also demonstrated her fierce competitive spirit as she edged the discus by just 7cm from Austria’s Emilie Schwarz and the shot by 8cm from her German rival Waltraud Hagenlocher.

She wrapped up her outstanding Paralympic career at the 1980 Games in Arnhem, securing her eighth Paralympic gold medal with shot put gold and revealed her versatility by banking a silver medal in archery. This proved Eve’s final international competition before retirement, although as a measure of her success it should be noted that it was only in 2016 when her record-breaking New Zealand haul of 14 Paralympic medals was eventually surpassed by swimming sensation Sophie Pascoe.

Banking multiple medals on the global stage and setting a raft of World and Commonwealth records. She appeared at four Paralympic Games, two Commonwealth Paraplegic Games, one international Stoke Mandeville Games and one Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled

Such was her level of fame, Eve finished runner-up in the New Zealand Sportsman of the Year award behind the gold medal-winning Olympic rowing eights. In 1990 she became the first Para athlete to be inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame.

Throughout her life she was an ardent advocate for disability rights. She served as a national councillor on the New Zealand Paraplegic and Physically Disabled Federation. Alongside Savage, Eve also established several sporting clubs around the central North Island.

She also helped set up the Games for the Disabled in Whakatane – which has since named the Eve Rimmer Games, which take place biennially.

A passionate campaigner for the disability community for many years she acted as a tireless public speaker to raise public awareness.  In 1973 her work to promote Para sport was recognised with a British Empire Medal.

Offering an open and frank portrayal of life as a paraplegic at a time when such matters were rarely discussed openly, few people shifted the needle more in New Zealand for greater acceptance and understanding of disability.

Eve underwent a leg amputation in the early 1990s and died of cancer in Tauranga Hospital at the age of 59 in 1996. Whakatane Council later honoured Eve by naming a local sports ground – Eve Rimmer Park – in her name.

Written by Steve Landells