Commonwealth Games: Para-athlete Rhiannon Clarke never felt like she fully belonged. Sport changed that

Rhiannon Clarke has found peace on and off the track.

The decorated para-athlete, who is about to sprint for a third successive Commonwealth Games podium place in the T38 100m category in Glasgow, was born with mild cerebral palsy and diagnosed at 10 months but it wasn’t until her teens that she truly discovered who she was and where she belonged.

“Growing up, I didn’t really see many people who were like me,” she tells STM.

“I’d seen more people with more severe disabilities, but then I felt like I didn’t fully belong in the disability community and I didn’t belong in the able-bodied community, so I grew up just really resenting my disability and thinking like, ‘Why do I even have to have a disability? It makes my life harder and it’s not fair at all’.

“But then having a disability, I’ve realised it’s given me opportunities to meet people, inspire people and it’s given me this awesome outlet of sport. It definitely challenges me but it has changed my life.”

Cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that affects movement, muscle tone and posture due to abnormal brain development or damage to the developing brain, has not prevented Clarke from winning three world championship and two Commonwealth Games medals, but it wasn’t until she was 12 when she attended a come and try day that she knew para-athletics were an option.

“I would be the kid who got picked last on the teams for sports, because I would always drop the ball, and I’d be the one coming last in the running races,” she says.

“I didn’t realise I could be a para-athlete, because I didn’t think the Paralympics were for people with mild cerebral palsy. So I thought there was no hope for me in sport, but until someone actually told me you are classifiable, that changed my whole life, and sport has literally done that.”

She kept her personal breakthrough quiet, however, as she didn’t want to be treated differently by her peers.

“I felt it was going be hard for them to understand my disability, and I didn’t really want to explain it. So I kept trying to hide it and the fact that I competed as a para-athlete,” she says.

“I was just so scared of them treating me like I’m less than them, or that I’m different, or making fun of me.

“I’ve now realised that was not going to be the case and people are just curious in this world. There are some bad people, but the majority of them are just curious and want to understand more and they want to see how they can support and help you.

“It was about understanding that I did have a place within the disability community because it doesn’t discriminate against people, but also that I was never going to lose my friends.

“People actually can be kind. We’re not born being discriminative, we learn that as we grow up. So it’s definitely one thing I want to try and change the narrative around.”

Clarke turns 24 on the day of the Glasgow opening ceremony but won’t get to take part, as she will be in Barcelona on a training camp — due to her age and timing, she hasn’t marched in an opening ceremony yet across two Commonwealth Games and two Paralympics.

She was 15 when she made her Commonwealth Games debut on the Gold Coast in 2018 and so didn’t arrive until several days later — but emerged with a surprise silver medal.

“I had the exact qualification time of 14 seconds flat and I felt like, ‘Oh that’s cool, but I’m probably not going to be going’. And then that season, I just kind of kept improving. I took my PB from 14 flat down to 13.60 at the national champs and solidified my spot on that team,” she says.

She won a silver medal, taking 0.43 of a second off her personal best in the final.

“I went out there and I shocked everyone. Going into it, I thought there was a chance maybe for bronze, if I had run a very decent time. I was thinking fourth was probably very likely. Just to stand on that start line, I was just so young and I was just out there to have fun and just enjoy myself,” she recalls.

“I feel like that’s something I’m kind of leaning towards now, to channel my inner 15-year-old who was just in awe and was just there for fun.”

Clarke secured another medal, bronze, in Birmingham four years later.

In both finals, she shared the podium with the same duo — England’s Sophie Hahn won in 2018 with Olivia Breen from Wales taking the bronze. In 2022, Breen took gold and Hahn silver. All three are in the frame for the podium again in Glasgow.

Clarke is also competing in the T38 200m.

“We have got some pretty fast young Aussies (fellow West Australian Ella Pardy will be competing at her fourth Commonwealth Games in the T38 100m) but I think it’s going to be the two girls from 2018 to 2022 as the ones to beat,” she says.

“Now I am in the 200 I guess I am doubling my chances. I want to go for that gold. I want to go for two golds. But the main thing is, I want to go out there and enjoy it and leave everything I have on the track and really just give it my all.”

Clarke also won bronze medals at the 2019 world championships in Dubai in the 100m and 200m in Dubai and a silver in 400m in Paris in 2023.

She finished fifth in the 100m final and seventh over 400m at the Tokyo 2021 Paralympics and was just squeezed out of the medals in fourth place four years later in Paris over 100m and placed fifth in the 400m, setting Oceania records in both.

“I thought that the world was going to end if I didn’t win a medal in Tokyo. The world clearly didn’t end. And I was still doing the sport afterwards,” she says.

“I think going into the Paris Games was kind of a different mindset, because Tokyo I’d gone in and put so much pressure on myself to win a Paralympic medal, because I’d won medals at the world champs the year before.

“I went in with that mindset. I had run a pretty decent time leading up to it. I knew that the girls were getting fast, and I knew just to make it into the final I would have had to have had to have run a personal best in a really good time.

“I ended up running a PB in the heat, and then in the final, I ran an even better PB. Even though it was fourth place, I was pretty happy with that. What more could I have asked for than a PB in the final?”

That time, 12.72, is still her PB, although she got close in 2025 with a 12.77.

She is also coming off a strong domestic season where she was close to her 200m PB with a 27.12.

Clarke’s journey has been underpinned by a West Australian Institute of Sport scholarship, which she started in mid-2018 although she was on a training agreement prior to that.

She has also been the beneficiary of a Variety Heart Scholarship, which she says played a crucial role in her early preparation for major competitions, easing financial barriers.

Clarke works hard at her craft. She trains three times a week at the track on top of three gym sessions at WAIS under the tutelage of coach Danny Kevan.

She is also becoming a coach in her own right, taking charge of a weekly session with 10 young para and able-bodied athletes in Kingsway.

“If sports changed my life, it can change so many more lives,” she says.

“I have my coaching accreditation, but there’s so much you can learn from someone else. So while I’m still learning my coach is guiding me along the way.

“We want to keep kids in sport and don’t want to discourage them, so it’s just to have fun, build some skills and hopefully we’ll see them in the future.

“Danny has definitely been my biggest support. I started training with him at the end of 2019 after the world champs.

“He has this very interesting kind of style of coaching, how he talks and communicates with athletes is different depending on the athlete, and he finds ways to be able to think of cues for different people when they’re running.

“I don’t know if I’d still be doing the sport if I wasn’t training with him. I can go through a tough day at uni or at home and get to the track and I’m just not in a good mood, and then as soon as I see the training squad, my mood changes. I don’t think I’ve ever got through a session in a bad mood.”

Kevan has helped Clarke battle through a toe injury.

“It’s not really caused her any more damage, or it’s not progressing. It’s just constantly sore, so it’s quite a tough one for the support team trying to find out, how do we minimise that pain and combat it in the long term, while still being able to train,” he says.

“It’s a lot to do with her mind, at which she’s been exceptionally good. It can’t be easy being sore all the time and it goes hand in hand with the neurological issue she’s got.

“She’s brilliant, she has just got better and better as she’s matured. I know it probably sounds like the perfect scenario that everyone would say, but it really has been with Rhiannon.

“She wants to understand everything. She asks questions, the stuff with her foot, she’s led the research into what it could be and brought options back to the team as well.”

Off the track, Clarke is immersed in a Bachelor of Biological Science at UWA with the aim of working in wildlife conservation. She is nearly finished her undergrad with plans for a masters.

“I always wanted to be a vet, but I don’t have the best fine motor skills, so it was realistically never going to happen, but when I actually looked at wildlife conservation, my whole mindset changed about it and it’s still helping animals, but to a different extent,” she says.

“I’ve always loved animals more than humans. I just think they’re just so interesting, and there’s just so much more that we can learn about them. Sometimes they’re more fun to hang out with because they can’t talk back to you.”

She’s been helping a PhD student this year with magpie research.

“They are just such intelligent creatures, and they have really amazing social structures in their communities and it’s so interesting to see their behaviour and how it changes,” she says.

At 24, Clarke is only just beginning and is already eyeing the LA Paralympics in 2028, the next Commonwealth Games in India in 2030.

And there is Brisbane 2032.

“I’ll be 30 years then, so it’s achievable,” she says.

The Glasgow Commonwealth Games will run from July 24 to August 3, broadcast live on Seven and 7plus