Jennifer Newstead

Career

Newstead was part of the New Zealand swimming team at both the 1992 and 1996 Summer Paralympics winning a total of 10 medals, seven of them gold. She was coached by Duncan Laing.

Newstead won two gold and four silver medals at the 1994 world championships in Malta.

In her swimming career, Newstead broke a total of 37 world records. She retired from Paralympics competition in 1997 after a wheelchair accident in which she lost the use of her right arm.

Newstead featured in the New Zealand television documentaries 12 Days Of Glory - The Forgotten Athletes (1993) and Triumph of the Human Spirit (1996), narrated by Paul Holmes.

Newstead is an integrated dance educator at the University of Otago in Dunedin. At the Dunedin Fringe Festival in March 2013 an aerial troupe including Newstead wowed the crowd with a spectacular silk routine, suspended from a crane nine metres above the Octagon.