In 2009, Australian Paralympic wheelchair basketball star Justin Eveson was on the winning side in every tournament in which he took part.
In the Australian National Wheelchair Basketball League, he won a gold medal and was voted High Point Most Valuable Player and Most Valuable Player in the Finals. He also won a gold medal in the Turkish National Wheelchair Basketball League and the European Wheelchair Basketball Champions Cup.
At the age of 12, Justin Eveson had his right leg amputated below the knee after a garden accident. He had enjoyed an active life prior to his accident, so once he received his prosthetic limb he began to play sport again with his friends. He took up disabled swimming and wheelchair basketball and soon became Australia’s best junior athlete in both sports. In 2000, after winning a silver and bronze medals in swimming in front of his home crowd in the Sydney Paralympic Games, Justin decided to switch his focus to wheelchair basketball.
He began to play for the Perth Wheelcats in 2001 and made the Australian team in 2002. This led to him living in various countries, including Italy, Spain and Turkey, playing professional wheelchair basketball and winning three consecutive European Champions League Cups. At the 2004 Athens Paralympics, Justin was in the Australian Rollers team which won the silver medal. And four years later he and his team-mates took wheelchair basketball’s highest honour when they beat Canada 72-60 to win the Paralympic gold medal in Beijing in 2008.
