Russell Short

Russell Luke Short, OAM (born 7 May 1969) is an Australian legally blind athlete, who has competed at eight Paralympics from 1988 to 2016 and won six gold, two silver and four bronze medals at the Games. He competes in discus, javelin, and shot put.

Personal Russell Luke Short was born on 7 May 1969 in the Victorian town of Poowong. He has 2% peripheral vision due to macular degeneration, which first began to affect him at the age of four and a half; his brother also has the disease. He attended Korumburra Secondary College.

In 1993, he kayaked across the Torres Strait from Cape York to New Guinea as part of a team of four men including Paralympian Ched Towns, and also walked the Kokoda Track with them. These experiences were recounted in the 1995 documentary The Blind Leading The Blind and the 2004 book Blind leading the blind : a journey of vision across the Torres Strait and Kokoda track.

He lives in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Huntly with his wife, Christine, who is also legally blind, and two sons, Jim and Will. He works as a massage therapist.

In 1988, he became the first disabled person to receive a scholarship from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). In 1990, while being coached by AIS Throws Coach Merv Kemp, he broke the discus B2 world record twice. He competed in the 1990 World Championships and Games for the Disabled, Assen, Netherlands winning gold medals in the Men's Shot Put and Discus B3 events.

In the 1992 Barcelona Games, he won two gold medals in the Men's Discus B3 and Men's Shot Put B3 events, for which he received a Medal of the Order of Australia, In the 2004 Athens Games, he won a bronze medal in the Men's Shot Put F13 event and came fifth in the Men's Discus F12 event. Six weeks before winning the bronze medal, he had fallen off a two-meter wall and broken his arm.

Short carried the Australian flag during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Games. He won a silver medal in the Discus event at the 2011 IPC Athletics World Championships in Christchurch, New Zealand. In a February 2011 interview shortly after the Championships, he said: "Things are starting to fall apart, particularly my shoulder, but with a lot of changes to the way I train and a lot of physio, I'm confident I'll be right".

At the 2012 London Paralympics, Short won a bronze medal in the Men's Shot Put F11/12 event.

In April 2017, Short was awarded the Athletics Australia Edwin Flack Award for 2016.

At the 2017 World Para Athletics Championships in London, England, his eight championship, he finished fifth in the Men's Shot Put F12 with a throw of 14.29 m and seventh in the Men's Discus F12 with a throw of 39.31 m.