O'HANLON Evan

Classification
T38, F38 (IPC, 10 Apr 2020)

Type of Impairment
Cerebral Palsy (Athlete, 06 Nov 2019)

Origin of Impairment
Congenital (Athlete, 06 Nov 2019)

Impairment Details
He has cerebral palsy as the result of a stroke before birth. (Athlete, 06 Nov 2019)

General
BOBSLEIGH
He became interested in bobsleigh while watching the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang. One of his trainers had competed in bobsleigh for Hungary, and he told O'Hanlon that he would be physically capable of competing in the sport at an elite level. He began training to pilot the sled, and has ambitions to compete at the Olympic Winter Games. "It's not just reacting to what's in front of you. I have to memorise the track because when you're going at 120 kilometres an hour there's no way you can react, you have to know what's coming. Once you've crashed you kind of get over it a little bit, it's not that bad. It's more the frustration when I crash because I'm responsible for somebody else as well in the back of the sled. I want to become an Olympian because I want to add that to my titles but I'm not trying to take anything away from being a Paralympian either - they're two totally different things and neither of them is better than the other. If I didn't try it, I knew I would've been that 50 or 60-year-old at the pub saying they could have done bobsleigh." (athletics.com.au, 29 Jan 2021; paralympic.org, 22 May 2019)

RETIREMENTS AND RETURNS
He retired from Para athletics after winning a silver medal in the T38 100m at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, due to financial reasons. However, his father Terry later convinced him to move to Sydney, NSW, Australia, and start working part-time for his architecture business to fund and continue his athletics career. He retired for a second time after winning gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, only to change his mind while rehabilitating from an operation he had on a hernia problem shortly after the Games. In October 2018 he and his family relocated to the Czech Republic [where his wife Zuzana O'Hanlon is from] so he could focus fully on his sporting career. "I knew if I was going to do it I couldn't stay in Sydney, as I would have to do athletics full-time and I wouldn't be able to have a job or afford to live in Sydney." (athletics.com.au, 29 Jan 2021; paralympic.org, 26 Feb 2019; canberratimes.com.au, 04 Jan 2017)

At the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, he became the first athlete with cerebral palsy to run under 11 seconds in the 100m. Days later he also became the first cerebral palsy athlete to break the 22-second barrier in the 200m. (paralympic.org, 28 Feb 2013)