Name: Al Viney
Country: Australia
Sport: Para Rowing
Previous Paralympic Experience: Tokyo 2021
Social Media: Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter
Who is Al Viney?
As she was growing up, Viney focused on one goal: to represent her native Australia at the Olympics. She displayed impressive athletic talent as she pursued her dream, capturing a national championship bronze medal while still in high school.
But then on the night before her Year 12 graduation, Viney suffered a car accident due to a drunk driver that caused lasting impairments to her forearm, hand, and elbow.
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For years, she thought her time as an active athlete was over and spent years away from the sport to which she dedicated much of her life.
Then when she was 26, a colleague casually asked Viney if she’d ever considered becoming a parathlete.
“It was in that moment that it kind of occurred that there is a place for me in sport and I can be that athlete that I’ve always wanted to be,” she said.
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That was all she needed to rekindle her old ambition. A few months later, she sat down in a boat for the first time since the accident.
Three months after that, Viney qualified for the Australian senior para rowing team and helped them finish second at the Gavirate International Para Regatta in May 2019.
She then qualified for the Tokyo Paralympics and just missed the podium with her crewmates, finishing in fourth place.
An out member of the LGBTQ community, Viney is an ambassador for Proud 2 Play, an advocacy group pushing for inclusion in Australian sports. In this role, she frequently addresses the intersectionality of representing the LGBTQ and disability communities on the world stage.
“If you’re not actively engaging, having conversations, and learning how to be inclusive and welcoming to the people in a community, then we have a stalled feeling where we have to be aware of what part of us we are putting forward instead of just feeling completely comfortable and accepted in the environment,” she said.
Al Viney at the Paris Paralympics
Viney will be looking to take the next step onto the medal podium as part of the PR3 Mixed Cox Four Para Rowing event on Friday. This co-ed race features two men and two women rowing each boat.
“I know that when I sit in the boat in Paris that I’m going to represent what it means to belong and to embrace every aspect of yourself,” she said, “And to do that with your head held high, I think, is probably my proudest achievement.”
