Win or lose, Dylan Alcott is changing perceptions of people with disability like me | Kate Thomas
Imported
The tennis champion, Paralympian and Australian of the Year has helped move the dial towards inclusion
When I was younger, the Australian Open lit up my family’s lounge room. The blue court light reflected off the walls each time a racquet greeted a tennis ball – thwack. It was normal to address players by their last name: Federer, Williams, Nadal, Clijsters, Tsonga. And like many others, tennis was my alarm clock for summer. But in 2015 another name joined our vocabulary: Alcott.
It’s a name that needs little introduction and is rarely met with a question mark. Dylan Alcott: the first man in tennis history to win a golden slam. Alcott: the guy who crowd-surfed at a music festival in his wheelchair. Alcott: who quoted Wu-Tang Clan lyrics on ABC’s Q+A. And most recently, Alcott: the first person with a visible disability to be named Australian of the Year in the award’s 62-year history.