Kelly Cartwright of the VIS competes in the Womens Long Jump Ambulant during day one of the Australian Athletics Championships at Lakeside Stadium on April 13, 2012 in Melbourne.
As a teenager Cartwright was a promising netball player who hoped to pursue the sport indefinitely. But at the age of 15 she learned that she had cancer in her right leg and that doctors would have to amputate the limb. Unable to play her chosen game, she turned to the track. Success came slowly. According to the Australian Paralympic Committee’s official bio for Cartwright, “her proudest moment was running for the first time with her proper running prosthesis without falling over” in 2007. A year later she finished sixth in the 100m sprint at the Paralympic Games in Beijing, and she subsequently set the world record in the 100m, 200m and long jump events in her leg amputee classification. Outside of athletics she enjoys hiking—she climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2009—and spends time with her Burmese cat, who also underwent an amputation.
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