Julie Russell

Julie Elizabeth Russell, born Mitchell on 20 August 1951 in Adelaide, is an Australian Paralympic athlete, powerlifter and wheelchair basketballer. She contracted polio as a toddler, which paralysed her lower body, and she became involved in wheelchair sport through the Adelaide Archery Club after a biology degree. At the 1979 Stoke Mandeville Paraplegic World Games she won four gold medals, a silver and a bronze in athletics and archery. In powerlifting she won gold at the 1994 FESPIC Games in Beijing in the +82.5 kg event, silver at the 1998 IPC Powerlifting World Championships, and silver and then gold at the 1998 and 1999 European Powerlifting Championships. After lobbying for fourteen years for women to be admitted, she competed at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics, the first at which women could compete in the sport, and came seventh. She has been married to the Paralympian Eric Russell since 1979.