Mark Davies

Who is Mark Davies?

Mark Hedley Davies was an Australian Paralympic athlete. He was born in Darwin, and was the first man to represent the Northern Territory in sport for the blind. He had a degenerative eye condition that caused tunnel vision; he found it more difficult to compete in able-bodied sports as he got older, and by 2000, he had lost all of his sight.

He began his athletic career before the establishment of the Northern Territory Institute of Sport, so he had to organise all his training and transport independently. In 1982 he joined the newly formed Northern Territory Blind Sports Association, and went on to win many medals and break Australian records at national blind sporting championships. At the 1984 New York/Stoke Mandeville Paralympics, he won gold medals in the Men's Pentathlon B2, where he broke a world record, and the Men's 100 m B2. He also competed in athletics without winning any medals at the 1988 Seoul, 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, and 2000 Sydney Games. He worked as an athletics coach, and assisted other blind sportspeople in the Northern Territory. In 2000, he received an Australian Sports Medal.

He died in Darwin in January 2011, a week after the death of his wife. The Australian Paralympic Committee described him as "a genuine pioneer of the Australian Paralympic movement".