Meet the rising para-athletics star with a triple Olympian in her corner
By Tom Decent
When Mali Lovell was a young girl, a paediatrician delivered a jarring message to her mother Mel.
“She’s never going to be an Olympian,” the family was told after their daughter was diagnosed with ataxia, a rare type of cerebral palsy that affects balance and coordination.
It was one of those moments in life that always stuck with Mel Lovell, who watched her daughter learn how to crawl, stand up and talk as other toddlers developed quicker.
“‘She might not be an Olympian’, I thought, ‘but she’s going to be a Paralympian’,” Lovell says. “We should look him up [the paediatrician] and send him a photo now.”
Here is Mali Lovell, approximately 16 years later, with a grin from ear-to-ear in her brand-new Australian team tracksuit ahead of the World Para Athletics Championships next month in Paris.
On a chilly Friday afternoon in Collaroy, on Sydney’s northern beaches, the 19-year-old 100m and 200m sprinter is flanked by her secret weapon coach and one of the biggest names in Australian athletics.
Para-athletics star Mali Lovell with her coach, former Olympian Melinda Gainsford-Taylor. Credit: Peter Rae
Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, a triple Olympian and national record holder in the 100m and 200m events, first met Mali Lovell through her daughter’s soccer team.
Gainsford-Taylor and her coaching partner, Katie Edwards, had trained dozens of able-bodied track and field stars but never a para-athlete. There was something about Lovell that the pair were drawn to.
“She was a little bit scared coming down,” Gainsford-Taylor says. “Being a para-athlete coming into an able-body group could be possibly daunting. Everyone is the same to us. It doesn’t matter about anyone’s ability.”
“There was this moment where we thought, ‘we’ve got her ... she’s in track and field now’.”
Mali Lovell, with her coaches Melinda Gainsford-Taylor and Katie Edwards. Credit: Peter Rae
Edwards explains her side of the story.
“Over six years ago I first met Mali and there might have been a few tears in the first few sessions,” Edwards says. “I was as nice as possible. She had a skip in her run. It took us a few sessions to get that out. We realised over time if she ever wanted to make a Paralympics or world champs, we had to move to 100s and 200s.”
Lovell will compete in the T36 category, for athletes with “coordination impairments, such as hypertonia, ataxia and athetosis”.
“I’m so excited,” Lovell says. “Athletics has changed my life. I was just trying to learn how to walk and talk at that young age. Now to be here … oh my god. I’m just happy to be there. I want to run fast.”
Mali Lovell will represent Australia at the World Para Athletics Championships next month in Paris.Credit: Instagram
For the best part of a decade, Gainsford-Taylor competed on the world stage, including at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But the satisfaction she has got from worked with Lovell is like nothing else.
“Seeing her in this Australian uniform, it’s such an incredibly special moment,” Gainsford-Taylor says. “I’m very emotional. I actually get more emotional for my athletes than myself. It’s been so beautiful to watch over the years.”
Then there’s Mali’s mother, Mel, whose bottom lip begins to quiver when discussing her daughter’s journey.
She has a message for her younger self.
Melinda Gainsford-Taylor and Cathy Freeman after the final of the women’s 200m event at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.Credit: Craig Golding
“I wish I could go back to me then and just say, ‘it’s going to be OK’,” she says. “She’s living me and my husband’s dream. Nothing with her disability came naturally. She literally had to learn everything. That’s all through therapy and practice.
“We still live in the same house and there is a long concrete driveway. She’d have these AFO [ankle-foot orthosis] braces on and we had this wooden wheelbarrow we’d fill with bricks. She’d go up and down the 50-metre driveway. Sometimes she’d be crying but it was for her own good. She knows you have to do the hard work.
“We go out early to Homebush for training. Before my alarm has gone off, Mali is there in her full uniform at 6am. I never once have had to say, ‘come on, let’s go’. She gets up and turns the coffee machine on for me.
“I always think about that wooden wheelbarrow going up the driveway.”
Mali Lovell says athletics has changed her life, but in reality, it’s the other way around for those closest to her, who hope she can compete at next year’s Paralympics in Paris.
“She thanks us but we want to thank her,” says Edwards. “We would never have coached cerebral palsy athletes without her. Her passion and courage at every single training session inspires me to want to keep coaching athletes like her.”
The World Para Athletics Championships will be streamed on 9NOW from July 8.