Brian McNicholl

Brian Frederick McNicholl, OAM (born 30 December 1951) and became a paraplegic after contracting polio at the age of eleven months. During school, he was forced to sit in the library while sport lessons were taking place; this fuelled his love for sport.

After moving to Australia in 1978, was part of the Australia men's national wheelchair basketball team that came thirteenth at the Games, and won a bronze medal in the Men's Middleweight −75 kg paraplegic weightlifting event. In 1985, he won his first World Wheelchair Championships. McNicholl won another bronze medal at the 1988 Seoul Games in the Men's Up To 85 kg weightlifting event. McNicholl's gold medal came at the 1992 Barcelona Games in the Men's Up To 90 kg event with his world record lift of , for which he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. In 1994, he set another world record when he lifted , and won his third World Wheelchair Weightlifting Championships in Melbourne, Australia. In 1995, he competed at the European Weightlifting Championships in Strasbourg, France, and won a gold medal with a lift of . He was coached by Blagoy Blagoev, and advised by Olympic runner Herb Elliott, who he has known since the 1980s.

His second silver medal, and first for Australia, was at the 1996 Atlanta Games in the Men's Up To 90 kg powerlifting event.

Other sports work McNicholl served as the Chairman of Australian Weightlifting for People With Disabilities. From 1995 to 1998, he was the strength and conditioning coach for Collingwood Football Club. He also spent six years promoting sport in schools for the Victorian Department of Sport and Recreation.