The Nightly On Leadership: Madison de Rozario on health scares, Barbie dolls, and women in leadership

Madison de Rozario’s presence in the pantheon of para-athletes was settled long before her contemporaries ever placed a glove on a racing wheel.

A silver medallist at 14, as the youngest member of the Beijing 2008 Paralympics team, the road ahead had been mapped and cleared.

The beginning of the real journey, however, was still six years away — and not on a synthetic track or the bitumen of a road marathon, but on a plane bound for the United Kingdom.

The Australian para team was en route to the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and de Rozario was in two minds.

A medal in the 1500m was in her line of sight, but she had been seriously questioning her wheelchair-racing future after a disappointing London Paralympics two years earlier.

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Then it all came crashing down in a hurry. De Rozario became ill in transit and received medical attention when the team arrived at its Newcastle base, where doctors found a blood clot close to her heart.

Diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis, she was admitted to hospital and placed on blood thinners. A line was put through her Glasgow campaign.

It was frightening, shattering and awakening all at once.

Out of serious health trouble, but forced to watch the Games from the grandstands, the emotions swirled as she witnessed roommate and friend Angie Ballard win the gold medal in a 1500m final she had planned on winning.

There was jealousy and envy, then a wave of joy.

A year before Beijing, Canberran Ballard had sent the Perth para-athlete her first racing wheelchair.

“You want to be out there, you want to be the one who won that race. Every part of you as an athlete and as a competitor asks, ‘How do I make sure this never happens again?’” de Rozario says.

“And then you realise it is your best friend who is having this incredible experience.

“I wanted to be the first person to see her after the race and the whole time I was heading down to meet her I was thinking, ‘Get rid of the ugly side, the jealousy, the resentment, and be happy for someone you love’.

“I was wondering how I was going to do that and what was the first thing I was going to say to her.

“She beat me to it because the first thing she did was to check in on me and make sure I was OK. She said: ‘That would have been bloody hard to watch . . . but I’m so glad you’re here.’

“In that one moment I’m thinking not only do I love this sport but ‘Where do I find people like this in my life?’

“After the London Paralympics I thought I might be done. I was sprinting at the time and I was injured and falling out of love with the sport. I didn’t really know where to go or what I was doing.

“But that (Glasgow) was the catalyst moment. I was still half out (of racing) and watching from the stadium when Ange won.

“It was her first Commonwealth Games gold medal and the first thing she did was check in on me, someone she loves.

“That combination of factors helped me to fall back in love with the sport.”

On her return to training, de Rozario decided her future lay in longer distances. She ditched sprints and made 800m her shortest event, the 1500m and marathon her staple.

At last count her swag featured two Paralympics, three world and four Commonwealth Games gold medals. All up, she has 22 medals of all colours across those three competitions, alongside victories at the World Marathon Majors including London (2018 and 2023) and New York (2021). She has also won Sydney, which is now a major, and Gold Coast.

De Rozario was not born with her disability. Four days before her fourth birthday, she was paralysed and diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that leads to inflammation of the spinal cord.

She spent three weeks in hospital with her mum Linda by her side, watching Aladdin on repeat and wishing she was Genie.

“Whenever I’m really stressed, I watch Disney films. Every break-up I’ve been through, every race I’m leading up to, has been followed by a Disney binge,” she told Women’s Health magazine in 2020.

If Glasgow was the seminal moment, Tokyo 2021 was the defining one.

COVID meant no crowds and a compromised lead-up — her US and European rivals had the benefit of continued international racing during the pandemic — so she entered the rescheduled Paralympic Games in 2021 with doubts about where she sat in the pecking order.

She answered with a double triumph for the ages, breaking through for her first Paralympic gold medal in the 800m T53 before a come-from-behind victory in the marathon T54 on the final day.

She did it with her coach and mentor, fellow West Australian and nine-time Paralympic gold medallist wheelchair racer Louise Sauvage, by her side.

De Rozario, like Sauvage, had been coached by Australian Paralympic Hall of Fame inductee Frank Ponta, so the connection pre-existed their partnership.

How would she describe Tokyo in a word?

“Wild,” de Rozario says. “The tension leading into those Games just with the question ‘Will they or won’t they go ahead?’ was huge.

“Add to that the pressure of trying to be in the right physical shape to win a gold medal because in the six months leading in, Europe and America had opened up a little bit and they were racing. We still weren’t.

“Watching your competitors racing and seeing their results and not knowing if you stack up was hard.

“My training numbers were pretty good but what does that mean? I went into lockdown with the 1500m world record and I lost it during that time.

“So to win the 800m, which was on the second day of racing, it was a relief and such a joy to have Lou (Sauvage) have the experience alongside me.

“As an athlete it’s about winning that gold medal. To see Lou win her first Paralympic gold medal as a coach, even though she won nine in her career, none of her athletes had done it, so to watch someone who I have so much respect and love for have their own experience and selfish pride around that as well was unreal.”

Sauvage describes her protege’s Tokyo triumph as against the odds.

“There was a lot going on,” Sauvage says. “We didn’t have a choice of where we could train, how much we could do and I saw other athletes from other countries still getting out and about a little bit more than we were able to do.”

For de Rozario, the 800m gold medal that came first provided huge “relief” from the pressure at the start line.

“It was very structured, we knew exactly what we were doing, this is how we were going to do it, everything was planned down to every single detail,” she says.

“The 800 was a very big box that we really needed to tick, but the marathon was just a really beautiful experience.”

She won that race by just a second over Switzerland’s Manuela Schar in a dramatic sprint finish after making her move on a hill near the final stretch, overtaking American Susannah Scaroni, who had led by over a minute earlier in the race.

“Manuela is an athlete who I admire more than anyone I race,” de Rozario says.

“To go 1-2 with her after we had done so much work together over the 42km, it was just the perfect race.”

De Rozario was named Paralympics Australia’s athlete of the year after the Tokyo Games. She had a different experience again at Paris 2024.

Chosen as flag-bearer for the opening ceremony alongside swimmer Brenden Hall, she performed her duty in a pall of sadness as her father Roy had died hours earlier, but still exited with a bronze medal in the 5000m and silver in the marathon at her fifth Paralympics.

The experiences have been life shaping, both as an athlete and leader.

While de Rozario accepts her status as a role model, she says it is surreal to know that both able-bodied athletes and those with disabilities find inspiration in what she has achieved. “It’s not something I have become used to yet and I don’t think I ever will,” she says.

“I could name every single person that made me the person I am and the ways in which they did it. Whether it was proactive, like my coach Louise, or in the case of so many other women who would never know it.”

As a case in point, de Rozario references an interview she watched Australian athlete Morgan Mitchell (400m-800m runner) give at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

“It was so graceful. She made a mistake in her race and she managed to talk through the mistake, while taking full accountability for it,” de Rozario says.

“I am always fearful I am making excuses and not owning my mistakes and wanting to explain what happened because everyone has come on the journey with me and you want to be as honest as possible.

“Morgan’s interview stayed with me and even now when I’m doing post-race interviews, I am thinking about that.”

De Rozario names Australia’s Governor-General Sam Mostyn, Sauvage and her mum as three great mentors.

“I have been very lucky to be surrounded by very strong people who lead in, like, a powerful way,” she says.

“My coach Louise Sauvage. Someone like that. A huge name in our sport.

“My mum is such a good leader and she would never know that she is, but she very much just leads by example.

“She has lived her life as she wanted to do it and part of that is not telling others how to live their lives.

“Growing up with that as my main experience of what a woman in the world looks like, she takes that space and she’s able to grab opportunities and to be scared and to still do it anyway.”

De Rozario says “authenticity” is one of the most important traits of leadership.

“So many leadership roles have been occupied by men for most of our lives and so in women leaders specifically we have this habit of trying to replicate that,” she says.

“They have worked for our male leaders but the rules and skill sets are different for women. Often we do ourselves a disservice by doing that.

“The best women leaders I know do it with all the qualities that have typically tapped us out of leadership roles.

“Sam (Mostyn) is a great example of this. She is someone who does lead with a lot of firmness but also a lot of empathy and collaboration.

“We are seeing a lot of women leaders these days in sport and in a lot of industries who are very collaborative and there is no expectation that you are the sole person who possesses the information who can make the right decision.

“There is a lot of humility in the way that women lead and that is why it is so effective.

“It is a better representation of the community.

“We are seeing more men leading in similar styles now because we have seen it be successful. We are seeing leadership soften quite a lot.”

The best advice de Rozario has been given about leadership is to “turn up when you can and not when you think you have to”.

“The bar is very, very high. We expect quite a lot of anyone in the spotlight,” she says.

“It is a privilege to hear from leaders, but we are not entitled to it. Anytime that we are able to turn up and be advocates and be really strong and have those really tough conversations that carry so far, that’s amazing, but we can’t be expected to be that all the time.”

In 2020 de Rozario’s achievements were recognised by Mattel, which made a “Shero” Barbie in her image.

“I grew up viewing Barbie as being this unrealistic body image and I think the way Barbie was viewed in society went against everything I was trying to do as a person and as an athlete,” she says.

“So it was a shock to me initially. But they have done so much with the brand in the time since I was a kid.”

De Rozario points out Mattel had been proactive in closing the gap between girls and their potential by highlighting diverse career pathways in doll collections and festivals.

“They get a bunch of really cool women in jobs that we typically deem to be male, like astronauts, they get these women to meet these kids,” she says.

“It portrays the real possibilities for girls. Because oftentimes girls really quickly start to believe that they can’t do things.

“The big study that they did was ask a bunch of really young kids to draw a scientist and the girls would draw themselves as girl scientists and the boys would draw themselves as boy scientists.

“But by year four all of the kids were drawing boy scientists. So it became a boy job at some point.

“They (Mattel) use a lot of resources to try and combat that and Barbie has so many typically male jobs. So to align with them was really wild.

“Often the first time you work with a brand you try and find your overlap and working with Mattel the first time I thought, ‘This aligns perfectly’.

“For a brand like Mattel to pick a person to embody sport in Australia, to have a Paralympian, I’d never seen anything like that before.

“There is no world where that was even on the bucket list.

“And it’s so cool. She has got all of the tattoos that I had at the time. The guy that actually builds the dolls in LA messaged me on Instagram and was like, ‘This is great, I got to give Barbie biceps for the first time’. They took the cadre from my race chair to make it as realistic as possible. The wheels spin and everything. It was an insane project to be a part of.”

De Rozario has a double major in business and sustainable enterprise, but that can wait.

For now, she is immersed in public speaking when she is not competing or training — 160km a week typically, 200km in the lead-up to a marathon. Seven to eight sessions in her race chair per week and two to four in the gym.

The road now leads to Los Angeles in 2028 and her sixth Paralympics.

At 32, she is not ruling out Brisbane in 2032, when she will be 38.

“That’s the big question, isn’t it? I will be in LA. Post Paris was the first time that we finished a (Paralympics) Games and had no plan for the next four years,” she says.

“I didn’t know if I would make it to LA. I didn’t even know if I would make it to the next marathon. But I love it.

“Let’s get through LA, but the thought of a home Games is pretty powerful.

“We’ll see. There is a small, small chance that I will still be racing in Brisbane.”