Australian flagbearer Madison de Rozario shares emotional journey to marathon silver after father's death on Opening Ceremony day
Madison de Rozario was a picture of joy as she carried the Australian flag into Place de la Concorde at the Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Hours later, she found out her father Roy had passed away the same day.
Managing her Paralympic schedule, which consisted of three races, was no longer her biggest focus. The wheelchair racer had a much tougher choice to make – whether to stay in Paris or go home to plan her father’s funeral.
In the end, she did what she felt her father would have wanted.
"My dad, if I had gone home, he would have not wanted me to do that," de Rozario told Olympics.com after taking silver in the women's marathon T54 on Sunday (8 September) and sharing the news of her loss for the first time.
"It was unexpected so there was no way of me knowing this, but there was no pressure for me from my family that I go home," she continued. "I knew the option was always there to go home, but I would be at home planning a funeral. And I just wanted to get through this as well as possible.
"I know the impact the Paralympics has back home and you want to be a part of that and I think I can do more good from here than I could do from home. I have two sisters back home in Perth right now and everything is in good hands with them, whereas I think I had a job to do here that was more than just sport."
Madison de Rozario's 11 days in Paris after the Opening Ceremony
De Rozario came to Paris 2024 as a six-time Paralympic medallist and the reigning champion in the women’s marathon T54. Her hopes of adding to that tally paled into insignificance when her mother told her the tragic news soon after the Opening Ceremony.
Watching from the stands, her mother already knew what had happened by the time de Rozario led the Australian delegation in the Parade of Athletes.
The athlete grappled with a plethora of emotions as the Para athletics competition started at Stade de France two days later. Her first race, the women's 5000m T54 heats, was the eighth event on the schedule in the opening morning session. De Rozario later shared that she broke down in tears in the call room before that heat at Paris 2024.
She went on to win bronze in the event, and competed in the women’s 1500m T54 where she finished fifth.
On Sunday, the Australian wheelchair racer won silver in the women's marathon T54. While it was a step down from the gold she won three years ago at Tokyo 2020, it felt like a greater achievement for de Rozario.
"If these Games had been two weeks earlier, it would have hit a little harder," she said. "No matter how this would have ended, at the end of it, I knew that I get to go home, I'm going to see my sisters and that's quite important to me at the moment. It puts things into perspective a little bit.
"When you get into a Games bubble, it's so intense and everything feels like it means so much more than it does where I feel like I had quite a grounding experience this time around.
"The option of going home was always there and I think that helped. If I'd thought at any point that it was too much, then we absolutely would have left, but I think if I would have gone home, I would have watched the games on TV and I know I would have wished I was here doing it."
A race for silver on the cobblestones
De Rozario finished the race in a time of 1:46:13, over four minutes behind Catherine Debrunner who claimed her first Paralympic marathon gold. The Swiss took her Paris tally to five golds and six medals overall with USA's Susannah Scaroni claiming bronze.
It was a challenging course, full of turns and finishing with a strip of cobblestones which was especially tricky for wheelchair racers to navigate.
While Debrunner kept the lead throughout the race, de Rozario had a tough fight for second. The Australian dropped down to fourth position twice and managed to climb back up to second racing on the cobblestones with less than 10km to go.
"It's such a technical course, and the first part, the first 30k was probably a little nicer than we anticipated," de Rozario said. "The roads that weren't tricky turns, trying to come out of them, were actually really beautiful roads, which we weren't necessarily expecting, which was a relief. I think any more fatigue in the body hitting those cobblestones would have been an excruciating experience and it was brutal, as it was.
"I was so thankful to to get a little bit of a gap on Susannah on these cobblestones. I love working with her on the road. She's such a hard worker and she does so much out there, but the thought of having a sprint finish does terrify me. It was nice to have a little bit of a gap and I don't have to sprint finish this one like Tokyo was. It's not the Tokyo result, but I'm very happy with this silver."
De Rozario (L) shared the women's marathon T54 podium with gold medallist Catherine Debrunner of Switzerland and silver medallist Susannah Scaroni of the United States.
A father's lessons to a two-time Paralympic champion
De Rozario took up wheelchair racing when she was 12 years old. Her father was there "from the very beginning" and was also a big part of her education while she was home schooled growing up.
Roy imparted many lessons to his champion daughter over the years, including the motto that ultimately formed her identity as an athlete.
"There's a big concept that came from him around always knowing why you're doing something," she reflected. "It's something that I have turned into my own as I've gotten older.
"There was never this blindly going into things just because you think it's the correct thing to do or the right thing to do or someone's told you others around you were doing it. If you're going to do something, do it by all means but be doing it for the correct reasons. Do it because you want to. Work out why you're doing it in the first place, and that's been a huge cornerstone of my career and who I am is as an athlete."