Angie Ballard  Angela Ballard (born 6 June 1982) is an Australian Paralympic athlete who competes in T53 wheelchair sprint events. She became a paraplegic at age 7 due to a car accident. She began competing in wheelchair racing in 1994, and first represented Australia in 1998. Over four Paralympic Games from 2000 to 2012, she has won three silver and two bronze medals. Her current coach is Louise Sauvage and her training partner is Madison de Rozario. Ballard held athletics scholarships at the Australian Institute of Sport from 1999 to 2001, and The University of Sydney (while studying first commerce and then psychology), and also represents the New South Wales Institute of Sport. She has been appointed by a number of organisations as a disability or sports ambassador, and currently sits on the board of Wheelchair Sports NSW. She represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics. It was her fifth Games. Ballard was born on 6 June 1982 in Canberra. At the age of seven, she became a (T10) paraplegic after a car accident, when her mother lost control of the car through fatigue. Following the accident, her initial hospitalisation and rehabilitation was in Canberra for three months, among elderly amputees. Her rehabilitation was then moved to the Royal North Shore Hospital, where she met Christie Dawes (née Skelton), who she would later race with in the Australian 4x100 m relay team at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Because her brother had spina bifida, and was already "in the [regular] system", her parents insisted that Angie continue at a regular school, rather than one specifically for disabled students. She attended Lyneham Primary School and Lyneham High School in Canberra. Her physical education teacher was one of the people who first encouraged her to participate in wheelchair sports. After her rehabilitation she tried swimming and wheelchair basketball. Her first experiences of racing at the age of 12 resulted in blisters and a sore neck, but wheelchair athletics soon became her passion. At age 14, after treatment for scoliosis, Ballard was unable to participate in sport for a year. She was offered a scholarship with the ACT Academy of Sport and she then took up an athletics scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra from 1999 to 2001. In 2002, she moved to Sydney to attend university on a sports scholarship, initially studying commerce. , she was living in Liberty Grove, New South Wales and attending the University of Sydney studying for a Bachelor of Psychology, with the intention of practising as a psychologist.