Patricia Hill

A key player in the development of Para sport through the 1970s and 1980s, Patricia Hill stands proud as one of New Zealand’s greatest all-time wheelchair athletes.

An eight-time Paralympic medallist and multiple world record-breaker, the versatile South Islander excelled internationally in no less than 12 athletics events – on the track, in the field and on the road – during a highly accomplished career at the top.

Forming a powerful combination with husband Dave, who acted as her mechanic, coach and later as an influential administrator, the pair worked tirelessly to raise the profile of Para sport and change the lives of countless others.

Born in 1948 as the eldest of three sisters on a poultry farm just outside of Oamaru, ‘Trish’ was an active young child and recalls playing basketball and skiing before contracting polio at the age of seven.

The disease – which only later that year in 1956 would all but be eradicated in New Zealand through vaccination – left Trish a paraplegic, paralysed from the chest down.

Forced to walk on callipers and elbow crutches, Trish admits she faced a challenging childhood post-polio.

“To get around was not easy, getting around on callipers and crutches was horrible, it was hard going,” she recalls.

“It was even tougher at high school because we had to move around all over the school to get to different classrooms. I had to carry my books in a school bag on my back and I fell over a lot. Getting off the school bus was difficult and I always had to ask someone for help.”

Trish says the opportunity to try her hand at competitive sport at school was never an option. She was instead often lumbered with having to act as a scorekeeper in school PE lessons – a task she admits to hating.

“I was bursting with enthusiasm to get involved in sport and to just sit there scoring feels like you are missing out,” she recalls.

Leaving school at 15, she worked for an accountancy firm before she met Dave at the age of 18.

She continued to work at the accountancy firm until her life was to turn in a different direction in 1972 – the year before her marriage to Dave.

On her annual trip to Duncan Hospital in Whanganui to get her callipers re-made, she recalls browsing through an issue of Woman’s Weekly and reading about the accomplishments of pioneering Para athlete Eve Rimmer.

Inspired by the eight-time Paralympic wheelchair athletics champion, Trish wrote a letter to Whakatane-based Eve and later, when on vacation in the area, she dropped by to meet the champion athlete.

“Eve made us dinner and when we went into the lounge she showed me her Paralympic medals,” Trish recalls. “I picked one up, put it around my neck and I thought, if she can do it, why can’t I? That was the start!”

With the help of a small group of Dunedin-based athletes, she took her first tentative steps into training. Later connecting with coach Wayne Gough, she trained for both track and throws events and in 1974 headed north to Napier to make her competitive debut at the National Games.

Initially classified as a class three athlete, she coincidentally came up against Eve Rimmer and defeated her over 60m. It was a confidence boosting performance and, sensing greater success, so her passion for athletics developed.

Shortly after, she was reclassified as a class two athlete – for athletes with a more severe disability – and, despite competing in what she describes as an “old duffer” of a wheelchair which initially gave her speed wobbles, she was to have a secret weapon in the shape of husband Dave.

“He was a mechanic and could figure out why I got the speed wobbles,” she explains. “He adjusted the front wheels, that fixed the problem and we continued to gradually learn as we went along.”

Trish was put on a weight programme and trained out of a church hall. She threw at an adjacent park, which she entered via a gate at the bottom of her garden, and she had a solution to throwing the shot put on chilly winter mornings in North Otago.

“I put the shots in the oven to warm up,” she recalls. “Although I remember I left them in there too long one day and they took a long time to cool down!”

In 1975 she made her international debut at the Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled in Japan, describing the experience as an “eye opener”.

Despite having never been overseas before, she nonetheless snared four medals in Oita – winning gold in the shot put and slalom, and silver in the 60m. She also won gold in the 50m freestyle swimming – a sport she would never compete in again.

Her Japanese experience had been a huge success but she was overlooked for selection for the 1976 Paralympics in Toronto, Canada with selectors citing her lack of experience.

“It was a big disappointment because I reckon I could have come home with at least one medal, if not more,” she says.

Combining training six days a week with working full-time in a petrol station following her non-selection for Toronto, she did not lack in motivation. She continued to make progress under the coaching of Wayne and husband Dave and in 1977 she returned to the international stage by competing at the Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled in Parramatta, Australia.

There competing in her familiar mix of track and field events, Trish claimed a haul of seven medals, including gold in the shot put, 60m and discus, silver in the javelin and slalom and bronze in precision javelin, as well as table tennis singles. 

In 1979 she added the 200m world record to her growing list of accomplishments and the following year quite rightly earned selection to compete for New Zealand at the 1980 Paralympics.

However, in a sign of the ignorance which existed among some cultures towards those with a disability, the Paralympics were not hosted in Moscow – where the summer Olympics were held that year – but some 2500 kilometres away in Arnhem, Holland.

“At that time, Russia said they had no people with a disability, so instead we went to Holland,” she explains. “It was the first time I’d competed internationally against athletes from outside Oceania or Asia, the grandstands were full, it was amazing.”

Competing with no real expectations, she won silver in the class two 200m and went on to claim bronze in a controversial final of the class two 400m. Supporters of Kuwait’s Adelah Al-Roumi – the woman who crossed the line first – had somehow got onto the track in support of their athlete and impeded Trish, who was pushing from lane one.

“They leaned into my lane and started clapping for her,” Trish recalls. “I had to keep swerving around them and they were putting me off my race. Al-Roumi was disqualified and I was upgraded to bronze but I think I could have done better had I not been impeded.”

Nonetheless, Trish gained revenge on Al-Roumi in her favourite slalom event – a discipline which includes ramps and tunnels and tests the handling skills of the wheelchair – to strike gold.

Winning the full suite of medals in Arnhem and also placing fourth in the shot put, fifth in the discus and sixth in the javelin, it had been an epic all-round effort by the then 31-year-old athlete.

“I was so happy to come away with the full set of medals, although it doesn’t really change your life, you just carry on,” she adds. “All that is different is you now have more stuff hanging on the wall.”

In 1981 Trish was invited to compete in the 200m in Rome as part of an event to mark the International Year of Disabled Persons. Competing in the Eternal City, she went on to win 200m bronze and also got to meet the Pope in the Vatican.

“I remember he gave us some rosary beads, which I still have to this day,” she says.

Success continued the following year as she went on to win four gold medals in the 1500m, 5000m, slalom and 400m at the Far East and South Pacific Games in Hong Kong, setting a world record in the two former events.

Meanwhile, at the 1983 World Championships in Stoke Mandeville, she banked a further seven medals, taking gold in the slalom (with a world record) and pentathlon. She also earned silver medals in the 5000m and javelin throw and bronze in the 400m, 800m and shot put.

While she continued to accumulate more international medals, the success she enjoyed internationally was rich reward for putting in the hard yards to fund such trips.

Unlike today when the leading Para athletes are given the very best support, in the countdown to the 1984 Paralympics at Stoke Mandeville she was one of a group of four who took time off from their paid employment to tour the South Island to collect money from the public as a running group made their way around the island. 

“Dave drove the car and we followed in the caravan behind the runners collecting money with buckets,” she says.

“It was a little like begging but that’s what we had to do to enable us to get away to the 1984 Paralympics and Graham Condon (a six-time Paralympic medallist) and I would continue to train on rollers during the trip.”

Once there, the 1984 Paralympics once again proved a huge source of success for the talented North Otago-based athlete. She successfully retained her slalom title with a world record and claimed pentathlon (800m, 1500m, shot put, discus and javelin) silver before adding marathon silver on her debut over the 42.2km distance.

“I’d done a one-and-a-half-hour half marathon and when I was asked by organisers to put in a previous marathon time, I said to Wayne, ‘What do I put?’ He said to double my half marathon time and add ten minutes. So I put down three hours and ten minutes and that’s exactly the time I recorded to win silver.”

In winning silver, the South Islander became the first Kiwi female wheelchair athlete to complete a marathon.

In the final phase of her career, Dave took on a more central coaching and administrative role. He studied and learned from the top overseas chairs, skilfully making Trish’s competition chair.

He also served as Assistant Chef de Mission at the 1988 Seoul Paralympics – the event which was to prove Trish’s competitive swansong.

“On that trip he told me, ‘Do you want the good or the bad news?’ I said, ‘The bad news first’. He replied, ‘There’s no class two slalom (the event in which Trish had won gold at the two previous Paralympics)’. I told him I’d drop down to the class three and he said ‘I thought you would say that, I’ve already entered you. That’s the good news’.”

Even though she was competing against athletes with less severe disabilities, such was her slaloming ability she still took home a bronze medal, which was a huge source of pride for the Kiwi.

“I may have won bronze but to me that bronze was equal to a gold because I was competing against women who were much more able than me,” she explains.

In her final competitive appearance before retirement, she added marathon bronze in Seoul despite not starting the race with her racing gloves.

Finishing the race badly blistered, she was delighted to climb the Paralympic podium for the eighth time but aged 40 she was at peace with her decision to walk away from the sport.

“The American who won silver and who finished ten minutes ahead of me was aged only 20 at the time,” Trish says. “I remember thinking, I’m old enough to be her mother!”

Not only that but some five years prior doctors revealed she was already suffering from a common post-polio condition affecting the function of her arms and hands and she was struggling to be able to grip the rims of her wheelchair.

In 1991 Trish was awarded the MBE for her competitive efforts which included 36 international medals and marathon trophies across a 14-year period.

Following retirement, Dave continued to be a champion for Para sport and was appointed as New Zealand Chef de Mission for the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics.

However, the preceding year he suffered from viral encephalitis – an inflammation of the brain – which acted as the trigger for a serious neurological condition. Today he lives in a rest home in Oamaru.

“The irony is, he has far more of a disability than any of the athletes he supported for many years,” Trish says.

Post her sporting career, Trish supported Para fundraising efforts for many years and worked as a tutor for the CCS Disability Action. Now retired from working life, she has largely lost the function in her hands and uses a power wheelchair.

But what should not be forgotten is Trish, now aged 72, was a true pioneer of the sport. And to this day, she still holds the class two world record for the now defunct 110m slalom event.

Despite her current state of health, she adds: “I would have done it all again. I am proud that the work I put in paid off, because I sacrificed a lot.

“I had some amazing experiences. I met Prince Charles at the 1984 Paralympics, I met the Pope and the Crown Prince of Japan. All this wouldn’t have happened without athletics.”

Written by Steve Landells