Dylan Alcott – 2022 Australian of the Year

ABC report by Charlotte Gore

For the first time in the award’s 62-year history, a person with a disability has been named Australian of the Year.

Dylan Alcott OAM, a 31-year-old athlete, Paralympian, philanthropist, media commentator and advocate, has received the prestigious award for achievements in both his sport and his disability awareness work.

Alcott said as a teenager he hated using a wheelchair because there was nobody like him in mainstream media, but sport changed that.

He began his athletic career with a gold medal at the Paralympic Games in wheelchair basketball, then switched sports to tennis. He now has 23 quad wheelchair grand slams and a Newcombe Medal, and is the first male in history to win a Golden Slam in any form of tennis.

But Alcott’s sporting achievements are not the main reason he was named Australian of the Year, he is also being recognised for his work uplifting Australians with a disability.

In 2017, he founded the Dylan Alcott Foundation to provide scholarships and grant funding to marginalised Australians with a disability, and in the same year he co-founded disability and accessibility training start-up Get Skilled Access.

He organised AbilityFest, Australia’s first and only inclusive, fully accessible music festival, and wrote his best-selling autobiography Able.

Alcott’s achievements do not end with his advocacy, he is also a philanthropist, and in 2014 set the world record for the longest continuous playing of wheelchair tennis – 24 hours non-stop – to raise funds for The Starlight Foundation and the Children’s Charity.

He received an Order of Australia in 2009 at just 18-years-old, was named GQ Sportsman of the Year for 2016, and 2016 Paralympian of the Year.