Nationality Australia | Name Bill Mather-Brown | |
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Full name William Edgar Mather-Brown Born 14 April 1936 Fremantle | ||
William "Bill" Edgar Mather-Brown (born 14 April 1936) is an Australian Paralympian.
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Personal
He was born in the Western Australian city of Fremantle in 1936. He contracted polio in 1938 aged 2 in the town of Agnew in the Goldfields, Northeast of Kalgoorlie. He spent 2 years in the Kalgoorlie Hospital before moving back to Perth. He married Nadine Vine on 6 January 1967, who attended the 1972 Heidelberg Games as a team nurse. They had two children, a daughter, Rebecca and a son Ryan. His brother was Dibbs Mather, was a broadcaster and actor. In 2005, Dibbs Mather's son Australian film director William Mather-Brown drowned whilst rescuing his son Nicholas from the fast-flowing Var River, near Nice.
Paralympic Games
He has always been interested in sport and joined wheelchair sports in 1955. He went to the Stoke Mandeville games in 1957 and competed in several sports. At the 1960 Rome Paralympics, he won a silver medal in Men's Class B table tennis with Bruno Moretti and participated in the Australia men's national wheelchair basketball team. At the 1964 Tokyo Paralympics, he participated in wheelchair fencing as part of the Men's Épée Team. At the 1968 Tel Aviv Paralympics, he won a silver medal in the Men's Slalom A event and participated in swimming, table tennis and wheelchair basketball events.
Commonwealth Paraplegic Games
Mather-Brown competed at the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in his home town of Perth. He won medals in four sports. In weightlifting he wonnthe gold medal in the men's lightweight class B, in wheelchair basketball he won Gold in the Men's competition, in table tennis he won a gold medal in the men's doubles Class B and a silver medal in the men's class B, in swimming he won gold in the men's backstroke 50 metres Class C, and silver in the men's 50 metres crawl, class C.