Lyn Lillecrapp was 29 when she started competitive swimming and two years later – at the age of 31 – became a Paralympian at the 1976 Toronto Games.
In 1992, Lillecrapp received the Medal for the Order of Australia “For service to swimming, particularly as a gold medalist at the Stoke Mandeville World Wheelchair Championships”.
In 2009, she was inducted into the Swimming SA Hall of Fame.
Such acknowledgements and awards are the icing on the cake for an elite athlete. But winning is better.
At an age when most elite swimmers have retired, Lyn Lillecrapp was just starting.
However, her familiarity with the water started a long time before that.
At the age of about 9 months, she was taken to the local swimming pool for hydrotherapy to strengthen her legs after contracting polio at six weeks old.
She was 29 when she started competitive swimming and two years later – at the age of 31 – became a Paralympian at the 1976 Toronto Games.
She was born in Albury, in the Murray region of NSW, and six weeks later contracted Paralytic Polio, leaving her paralysed from the waist down. There was, therefore, a lot to master before she could put her attention on swimming competitively.
Initially she walked with calipers and crutches, but by her late 30s she changed to using a wheelchair to preserve her shoulders.
Lyn’s drive for independence was largely nurtured by her father: “My Dad was a visionary who was well ahead of his time in terms of attitude to disability,” she recalls fondly.
That same drive was responsible for her world class achievements in the pool.
A veteran of three Paralympic Games – Toronto 1976, Seoul 1988 and 1992 Barcelona – she won a total of three silver and three bronze medals.
Her versatility in the pool was stunning – competition events consisting of freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly events, and across distances varying from 50m to 200m.
But she shone most brightly at the International Stoke Mandeville Games, performances for which she was recognised with the OAM award.
In truly remarkable outcomes, she won four gold and a bronze in 1989, seven gold and two silver in 1990, and five gold, a silver and a bronze in 1991.
In passing, she mentions that “among the 1991 golds at Stoke (World Championships) was the 200m freestyle world record”.
Lyn Lillecrapp is a much-loved woman. She points out that the term “paralympic” is derived from the Greek word “para” which means “beside or alongside”, and in this context means a parallel with the able-bodied athletes.
In 1977, Lyn moved to South Australia just prior to turning 32 and has lived in the State ever since.
The same inner resolve that drove her elite success also led her, in her retirement, to undertake solo road trips up and down and across this vast land. The same spirit for new experiences and adventures burns bright.
Lyn Lillecrapp has been inducted into the Swimming SA Hall of Fame.
