The Australian Paralympic sprinter talks to Brendan McDonald about Commonwealth gold, growing up without seeing athletes like herself, and why nobody should have to prove they belong.
About five metres from the finish, Rhiannon Clarke knew she was going to win. She is now a Global Ambassador for Variety - the Children's Charity International.
She had gone into the women’s T38 200m at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow knowing she could do it. Knowing, too, that the other athletes were beyond her control. There was a race she was capable of running. Her job was to run it.
“When I crossed the line I felt this huge wave of emotions,” she tells me. “The lead up to the Commonwealth Games had been far from ideal, so there was a lot of relief, excitement and pride all at once.”
Gold mattered. After Commonwealth silver in 2018 and bronze in 2022, she had wanted to complete the set. By Glasgow, she had already competed at two Paralympic Games. This was an athlete with considerable experience and a very specific ambition.
It is worth letting her have that moment on its own terms. She wanted to win. She won.
But when I asked Rhiannon my questions, I also wanted to understand something a medal table cannot tell us: what it is like to have your disability formally assessed for competition, then encounter people outside sport who decide, by looking at you, that it cannot be real.
Rhiannon has cerebral palsy. Its effects are not always immediately apparent to someone meeting her. That gap between what her body does and what other people think they can see runs through her answers, from being picked last at school to questioning whether she belonged in the disability community at all.
I live with chronic myeloid leukaemia, hip osteoarthritis, and an often-invisible disability. I also run, although Rhiannon can relax: my particular contribution to Australian athletics is the steady plod. A glimpse of me exercising would tell you very little about the rest of it. So I was interested in how Rhiannon describes the assumptions attached to her own body, without pretending our experiences are interchangeable.
She puts it plainly: “My disability doesn’t disappear just because someone can’t see it.”
Before she knew the Paralympics were possible
At school, Rhiannon knew she had cerebral palsy. She did not know what that might mean for a future in sport.
“I was often picked last for teams at school and I thought that was just because I wasn’t very good at sport.”
There is a particular cruelty in how easily a child can absorb that judgment. Other children choose their teammates, you wait, and eventually being the one left over starts to look like reliable information about yourself.
Rhiannon had little to set against it.
“I didn’t know there was a Paralympic pathway for me, as I had never really seen anyone like myself in the media.”
Then, at 12, she went to a para-athletics come-and-try day. Somebody told her she could potentially go to the Paralympics.
“I remember being quite shocked by that because I had never even considered it.”
I asked how much of the barrier had been her disability, and how much had been not knowing the opportunity existed.
“I think a big part of it was simply not knowing that the opportunity existed.”
That answer makes me think about all the advice we give children to believe in themselves. Believe in what, exactly, if nobody has shown you that there is somewhere you can participate? Rhiannon needed information about a possibility she had never been offered.
“Looking back, I think that is why representation and access to opportunities are so important,” she says. “Sometimes the biggest barrier is simply not knowing what is possible.”
The feeling of being somewhere in between
Finding a route into athletics is one part of Rhiannon’s story. Finding a sense of belonging is another.
“My cerebral palsy has always affected me physically, but it isn’t necessarily something that people notice straight away. Growing up, I didn’t always feel like I fit what I thought a disabled person was supposed to look like.”
Meanwhile, her body kept giving her information that other people might miss. Some activities were harder. She tired more easily. There were physical things she could not always keep up with.
“So, I felt like I was somewhere in between. I didn’t necessarily feel like I belonged in the disability community, but I also knew I wasn’t experiencing the world in exactly the same way as everyone else.”
I had asked where the idea of not being “disabled enough” came from. Her answer returns to the absence of people whose experience resembled hers.
“I didn’t really have anything to compare my experience to, so I questioned where I belonged.”
There is a lot packed into that sentence. A narrow public picture of disability can affect how a child understands herself long before she has the language to question the picture. Rhiannon knew the physical differences were there. What she lacked was a recognisable place for them.
Classified on the track, questioned elsewhere
In para-athletics, classification is a formal assessment that helps determine eligibility and which sport class an athlete competes in. Outside that process, Rhiannon has encountered a much less informed assessment: somebody looks at her and announces that she does not look disabled.
“It has made me realise how much people rely on what they can see when deciding whether someone is disabled,” she says.
“Outside of sport, I have had people tell me that I don’t look disabled because they don’t immediately see anything different about me. I think that comes from a very narrow idea of what disability looks like.”
The confidence of that judgment is extraordinary. A person can know almost nothing about your body and still feel qualified to correct you about it. It is a problem I explored in my piece on “temporarily able-bodied”: what somebody can do tells you very little about the disability they live with.
Rhiannon’s response leaves little room for misunderstanding.
“There are physical things I deal with that aren’t necessarily obvious to another person, and that doesn’t make them any less real. There isn’t one way to look disabled, and you shouldn’t have to prove your disability to every person you meet.”
At the time of our interview, she is creating a social-media video about invisible disabilities. I ask which misconception she most wants to challenge.
“The biggest misconception I want to challenge is that if you don’t look disabled, you must not really be disabled.”
For her, cerebral palsy affects movement, how her body responds and what she can do, whether or not those effects register with somebody else.
“I want people to understand that you can’t always know what someone is dealing with just by looking at them. Someone doesn’t need to visibly show signs of their disability for it to be real.”
She is asking people to recognise the limits of their own knowledge. That seems a reasonable place to start.
Support before the results
Rhiannon’s connection with Variety began when she was six, through the Variety WA youth choir. Athletics came later. So did a Heart Scholarship in 2020, and eventually her role as a Global Ambassador.
I wanted to know what the scholarship had actually made possible. Support can become a rather vague word in a biography. What did it pay for? What changed?
“The scholarship made a real difference because elite sport comes with a lot of costs that people don’t always see, especially during Covid where my training had to adapt,” she explains.
“Having that support meant I could put it towards things like coaching and equipment that I needed to keep progressing as an athlete. The year after, I achieved my goal of going to the Paralympics.”
There were already Commonwealth results behind her by then, but her first Paralympic Games were still ahead. The help arrived while she was working towards that goal.
“I think what meant the most was having someone believe in me and my potential before I had achieved some of the things I have now. When you’re a young athlete, especially a young athlete with a disability, having that support can make you feel like other people can see something in you too.”
It is a specific account of what backing a young athlete involves: paying for things she needs, at a point when she needs them, while taking her ambitions seriously.
Who never gets to find out?
Rhiannon’s experience leaves an awkward question for the adults and organisations around disabled children. What happens to the child who never gets to that come-and-try day?
“If I hadn’t gone to that come-and-try day, I don’t know if I would ever have found athletics,” she says.
“There are so many young people with disabilities who might have incredible potential, but if they don’t have access to sport, don’t know that para-sport exists, or don’t have someone encouraging them to give it a go, they may never find out.”
We are quite good at paying attention once somebody wins a medal. Rhiannon is asking us to look earlier, when a child does not yet know whether sport has a place for them.
“I think we need to make those opportunities easier to find and make sure young people can see people like themselves already involved in sport. It can be as simple as seeing another athlete with a similar disability and thinking, ‘Maybe I could do that too.’”
A child should also be able to try sport, enjoy it and be thoroughly ordinary at it. Access cannot depend on whether there might eventually be a podium involved. The chance to find out belongs to them either way.
As a Global Ambassador, Rhiannon now helps Variety advocate for other children to have those same opportunities, reflecting its commitment to helping children reach their potential, whether through sport, mobility equipment that supports independence or access to healthcare.
For my final question, I ask Rhiannon to imagine a 12-year-old whose disability other people rarely notice, who is unsure whether they belong in the disability community. What does she wish somebody had said to her?
“I wish somebody had told me that I didn’t need to fit into a particular idea of what disability looked like.”
She would also tell that child not to limit themselves according to what they think they should be able to do. At 12, she could not have pictured becoming a two-time Paralympian, winning three World Championship medals or becoming a Commonwealth champion.
“Sometimes you just need to give it a go!”
And before any of those achievements, there is something she wants that child to know:
“You don’t have to look a certain way or have a disability that everyone can immediately see to belong. Your experience is still valid.”
Learn more about Rhiannon and Variety
As a Variety Global Ambassador, Rhiannon Clarke uses her platform to challenge misconceptions about invisible disabilities and champion equal access to sport for all young people. Variety - the Children's Charity International provides vital funding, equipment, and support to help children with disabilities and complex needs reach their potential, just as they supported Rhiannon on her journey to the Paralympics. Discover how Variety creates opportunities and builds inclusion at variety.org. Connect with Variety on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and watch Rhiannon’s video on invisible disabilities here.
This interview was conducted in writing. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
