{"id":542,"date":"2022-01-25T09:57:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T09:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/?p=542"},"modified":"2022-01-25T09:57:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T09:57:27","slug":"dylan-alcott-2022-australian-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/?p=542","title":{"rendered":"Dylan Alcott &#8211; 2022 Australian of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2022-01-25\/2022-australian-of-the-year-award-recipients-announced\/100780998\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ABC report<\/a> by Charlotte Gore<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the first time in the award&#8217;s 62-year history, a person with a disability has been named Australian of the Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alcott said as a teenager he hated using a wheelchair because there was nobody like him in mainstream media, but sport changed that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Alcott&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He organised AbilityFest, Australia&#8217;s first and only inclusive, fully accessible music festival, and wrote his best-selling autobiography Able.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alcott&#8217;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 \u2013 24 hours non-stop \u2013 to raise funds for The Starlight Foundation and the Children&#8217;s Charity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dylan Alcott&#039;s incredibly moving Australian Open Interview | Wide World of Sports\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3MFd973Flu0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ABC report by Charlotte Gore For the first time in the award&#8217;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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":544,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrimsj.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}