Julianne Adams
Encyclopedia
Julianne Adams is a wheelchair basketball player from Australia.

Personal

As a child, Adams thought that perhaps she could be an Olympic competitor in gymnastics. From the age of five to seventeen, Adams was involved with competitive gymnastics. During this period, she would often train for over thirty hours a week. While attending university, she worked in gymnastics as a designer of routines for other gymnasts, which could be video taped and compared against national standards. It was while practising routines she had done before that she injured herself falling on her neck, and severed her spinal cord after landing on her back. While she was in the hospital following her accident, she was approached by a wheelchair basketball player. The sport administrator knew of her background in competitive athletics and recruited her to play wheelchair basketball. She was not initially interested in participating in the sport, but her physiotherapy program required her to play. After playing the sport for the first time, she fell in love with it and decided to pursue it on a more competitive level.

She was one of five Paralympians named in a complaint to the Advertising Standards Bureau. The complaint alleged that the advertisement in which Adams appeared discriminated against the disabled as it implied the only reason she was heroic was because she was in an accident. The Advertising Standards Bureau ruled the advertisement did not do this, and was not in violation of Section 2 of the AANA Advertiser Code of Ethics. They dismissed the complaint.

On 12 October 2000, Adams addressed the Parliament of New South Wales.

Wheelchair basketball national team

She competed in the Australian women's national wheelchair basketball team's first international tournament. The tournament took place in St. Ettienne, France, and Australia finished in sixth place. She participated in the training camp for the women's team in preparation for the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics
1992 Summer Paralympics
The 1992 Summer Paralympics were the ninth Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.- Sports :The games consisted of 487 events spread over fifteen sports. Powerlifting and weightlifting were considered to be a single sport...

 but did not make the final selection. This disillusioned her and she did not compete in the sport for several years. She was selected for the 1996
1996 Summer Paralympics
The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, USA were held from 16 August to 25 August. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million....

 squad and moved from Western Australia to Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 to be on the national team. Between 1996 and 2000, the government increased funding for Australian Paralympic athletes. Prior to this period, Adams and other Paralympians were largely paying their own way to compete, such as the case with Adams paying her own way to compete in France. Getting compensation from government funding of sport organisations meant she could spend more time working on improving her sporting performance. In the eight months prior to the 2000 Summer Paralympics
2000 Summer Paralympics
The 2000 Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, from 18 October to 29 October. The eleventh Summer Paralympic Games, an estimated 3800 athletes took part in the Sydney programme. They commenced with the opening ceremony on 18 October 2000...

, she was able to be an athlete full time. She was part of the national squad that beat Canada in a June 2000 tournament. The victory against the Canadians was the first time Canada had lost a game in a tournament in ten years. She was part of the silver medal winning Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team
Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team
-History: Women's wheelchair basketball was first played at the 1968 Summer Paralympics in Tel Aviv, but Australia did not have a team that competed until 1992 in Barcelona....

 at the 2000 Summer Paralympics
2000 Summer Paralympics
The 2000 Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, from 18 October to 29 October. The eleventh Summer Paralympic Games, an estimated 3800 athletes took part in the Sydney programme. They commenced with the opening ceremony on 18 October 2000...

.

Women’s National Wheelchair Basketball League

She was named as one of the Women’s National Wheelchair Basketball League's All Star Five in 2001, 2002 and 2003 as a member of the Victorian Wheelies. In 2008, she was competing for the Western Stars.

Recognition

In 2000, she was given a special medallion by Victoria's Premier Steve Bracks
Steve Bracks
Stephen Philip Bracks AC is a former Australian politician and the 44th Premier of Victoria. He first won the electoral district of Williamstown in 1994 for the Australian Labor Party, and was party leader and Premier from 1999 to 2007....

 and Community Services Minister Christine Campbell
Christine Campbell (politician)
Christine Mary Campbell is an Australian politician.Born in Melbourne, Campbell graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education from La Trobe University . She later was Head of the National Women's Bureau in the Shop Distributive Association from 1974–80...

in recognition for her performance at the 2000 Paralympics. She appeared in the 2000 documentary Screamin' wheelies.
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