There has been few more heartwarming Para sport stories in 2025 than the seismic progress made by Para cyclist Siobhan Terry.
The former Para swimming athlete from Rotorua only converted to her new Para sport in early 2023, but her hard work and dedication paid spectacular dividends at the UCI Para cycling Track World Championships in Rio where she claimed a stunning haul of four medals (two silver and two bronze).
It was an outstanding feat by the ever-vibrant Siobhan, who played a huge part in the New Zealand Para Cycling Team harvesting 13 medals during four memorable days of action at the Velodromo Municipal do Rio.
“To be honest, the medals were unexpected, although the performance wasn’t,” explains Siobhan. “I worked really hard and put a lot of effort in training. I was always confident of giving 100 percent in those races. But when I first stood on the podium after the elimination race (where Siobhan won silver) I was in shock. Then it happened again on day two, day three and again on day four. I felt very proud, but I was shocked to win four medals.”
Born with bilateral talipes (clubfoot), she relocated with her family from Rotorua to live in Hobart, Tasmania shortly before her second birthday. An active kid, it was during her time in primary school in Australia where she developed a passion for sport. She competed in cross country, swimming, did ballet and hip hop and after finishing fourth in the school cross country she said, “that’s when I first realised I had a bit of talent for sport.”
Returning to Aotearoa New Zealand at the age of 13, her first taste of Para sport came shortly after beginning her journey at Rotorua Lakes High School. A teacher identified that Siobhan was eligible as a Para athlete at the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Cross Country Championships, which coincidentally took place in her home city. There she claimed a gold medal but acknowledging she was “not really a runner” because her leg could not handle the demands of the sport, she was to pivot to a new challenge.
Keen on trying Para swimming she discovered Rotorua-based Henk Greupink – who was later part of intake two of the Para Sport Collective supported by ACC – and the pair made an instant connection.
“Right from the first session what I liked about Henk was he asked me questions about who I was,” explains Siobhan, who featured in the first intake of the Para Sport Collective. “He got to know me as a person. I was quite nervous when first jumping in the pool, but he said, ‘just show me what you can do’ The quality that really stood was he never focused on my disability in a negative way.”
Aged 16 at the time, Siobhan was hooked. Showing enormous commitment to Para swimming under the guidance of Henk, she went on to win multiple national medals in the S10 classification.
However, despite her love of Para swimming, a new challenge loomed. In 2020 she experienced a “Have a Go day” for Para cycling and attended a Para Development Camp. Not quite ready to make the switch in 2022, she received an email if she would like to race in a Para cycling competition in Invercargill. Naturally competitive and curious, it was a challenge she could not resist.
“I loved the racing, it was exciting, fresh and challenging,” she recalls of the competition in Invercargill. “I loved the community and I could see the potential in the move.” In early-2023 and with Henk’s blessing she quit Para swimming to fully focus on Para cycling, and just three months into the Para sport she impressed by claiming a bronze medal in the Women’s C4 500m Time Trial at the Oceania Championships in Brisbane.
Travelling with little expectation she said her achievements in Australia were a huge “turning point” and she realised the scope of her potential progress as a Para cyclist.
Instilled with many transferrable skills honed during her time as a Para swimmer helped ease the transition, however it has unquestionably presented its challenges.
“As soon as I made the call to stop Para swimming I suddenly had so much more time on my hands (training in Para cycling),” she explains. “At first I thought, am I training enough? But I went from a Para sport where physiologically I was developing and working on my upper body and not really using my legs to moving to a Para sport which is basically all leg power. I quickly learned that I didn’t have the ability to walk around as much as I did when I was training as a Para swimmer.”
Training up to 13 hours a week on the stationary trainer, on the road and once or twice a week on the velodrome in Cambridge has required great dedication.
However, inspired by her world-class training partners; Paralympian #194 Emma Foy, her pilot Jessie Hodges, and Paralympians #222 Nicole Murray, #225 Anna Taylor and #229 Devon Briggs – she was also given more tools to succeed as part of intake one of the Para Sport Collective.
“I loved being part of the Collective, it was so cool,” she explains. “I got to meet and build relationships with so many Para athletes from other Para sports. In terms of preparing me for worlds it was excellent because of the media training we had done. It taught us how the drug testing might look and the challenges of travelling to overseas competition. There was so much we learned, which was helpful.”
Silver medals snared in the Women’s C4 Elimination race and Scratch Race and bronze medals in the Women’s C4 1000m Time Trial and Women’s C4 Sprint on her World Championships debut in Rio last month went way beyond her expectations, and she looks to the future with optimism.
“My first goal – I would love to move to Cambridge and hopefully one day be selected to be a part of the high performance team and fully commit myself to this journey,” she explains. “Next year there is a Commonwealth Games and I would love to set that as a target. The LA28 Paralympic Games still seems a long way off, but I would love to give it a crack. Rio fills me with reassurance that I am on the right track.”
Yet Siobhan – a Harvey Norman Para Sport champion – has always adopted a holistic approach to keep her centered. A passionate disability advocate, she works five days a week as a Regional Advisor with the Halberg Foundation, where the 25-year-old supports young people aged five to 21 with a physical, visual or hearing impairment to be physically active.
“It is the perfect job for me as I get to give back to the community,” she says. “Hopefully I am able to one day leave a legacy from this and inspire other young people along the way to find their own joy and sense of belonging in Para sports.”
So what would the four-time World Championship-winning medallist say to any young person with a disability considering engaging in Para sport?
“Para sport is about discovering what’s possible,” she says. “It will challenge you and test your limits but, it will also help you to discover your own strength and give you more joy than you could imagine. Para sport helped me to find my sense of belonging – these are the reasons I do Para sport and why I’d encourage others to give it a go also.”
Cover image by Simon Wilkinson / SWpix.com
