Ellie Cole AM (b. 1991), swimming champion, is Australia's most decorated female Paralympian. Two years old when she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer affecting the nerves in her right leg, at age three she underwent surgery to amputate the limb above the knee. Shortly afterwards, her parents enrolled her in swimming lessons to help with her rehabilitation. Swimming competitively by age twelve, Cole was fifteen when she competed in the World Championships for the first time, winning a silver medal in the 100m backstroke in the S9 classification. Having qualified for the Paralympic Games in 2008, she embarked for Beijing with few expectations other than to 'have a little bit of fun', but instead she returned to Melbourne with three medals. She broke the world short-course record for the 100m freestyle in 2009 and won another four bronze medals at the world titles in Rio de Janeiro that year. After winning six gold medals at the 2011 Pan Pacific championships, Cole moved to Canberra as the recipient of a scholarship to the Australian Institute of Sport. At the Paralympics in London in 2012, she won gold medals in the 100m backstroke, 100m freestyle, 4x100m freestyle relay and 4x100m medley, as well as two bronze medals. In 2016 – having recovered from two shoulder reconstructions and having won three 2015 world titles – Cole won medals in all six of her events at the Rio Paralympics. At her fourth and final Paralympics in Tokyo in 2021, she won silver and bronze medals in two relays. During her career she amassed seventeen Paralympic medals, four Commonwealth medals, three world titles and nine Pan Pacific gold medals. Passionate about the value of sport for people with an impairment, Cole appeared in Rising Phoenix, a 2020 Netflix documentary profiling six athletes who competed at the 2012 Paralympics.
