After years without a personal best in his 100m pet event, four-time Paralympian Rheed McCracken is back in the fast lane, and this time, with something to prove.
Rheed McCracken is no stranger to big stages. He’s been a mainstay of Australian Paralympic sport for over a decade, with medals from three Games and a reputation for consistency and class.
But between Tokyo and now, something shifted. Not outwardly. He was still training, still racing, but the spark had dulled. He wasn’t setting personal bests. He wasn’t winning. And for the first time in his career, he wasn’t sure if he could get back.
“I went through a little bit of a lull,” McCracken says. “I wasn’t really enjoying racing and I wasn’t racing very well… I think I lost confidence in myself completely 2023.”
He could have accepted it. With everything he’d achieved, no one would have faulted the Budaberg product for stepping away. But McCracken wasn’t ready to go out like that.
So he made a change.
In 2022, he left Newcastle, and the coach he’d worked with since he was 14, and moved to Sydney to train with Paralympic icon Louise Sauvage. It was a bold move, and not without its challenges.
“I loved my time in Newcastle and my time working there with [Andrew] Dawesy,” he says. “When I moved to Sydney, it was just trying to build a new relationship with a coach who didn’t understand me yet and one who didn’t understand my disability.”
For Sauvage, it was new ground too. She’d never coached an athlete with cerebral palsy, and McCracken was also a sprinter and therefore a very different profile to her other star pupil, Paralympic champion and marathon supremo Madison de Rozario.
It took time to adjust. Time to communicate, to recalibrate, to trust.
“I really wanted to impress Louise when I first came,” McCracken says. “I wanted to show her that the move was worth it. But it was really hard… there was a moment for me when I realised I just needed to be more honest with her. After that, everything changed.”
That breakthrough, late in 2023, set the tone for what came next. McCracken started to feel more connected to the program and to himself. He worked closely with a sports psychologist. Adjustments were made to his racing position. He tackled the mental habits that had crept in over time.
“You run the race too many times before actually starting it,” he says. “I just needed to get out of my own head. I didn’t need everything to be perfect. I’m strong enough to do the time.”
And then, in Switzerland this year, it all came together. He dipped under 15 seconds for the 100m — not once, but repeatedly. For the first time since 2019, McCracken was back in PB territory.
“It was the most put together I’ve felt in a long time,” he says. “I was really enjoying racing. If I could have raced more over there, I would have.”
The joy, once buried beneath pressure and doubt, had returned. It wasn’t the first spark, either; that came earlier in the season, in Dubai.
“I won the 400 in Dubai in February. It was the first race I’d won in years,” he says. “I was so happy and excited. It was like a spark and that’s how I want to race for the rest of the year.”
He credits his resurgence not just to one coach or program, but to the collection of voices that have shaped him over the years.
“Dawesy taught me a lot, and there are still things I use now that he taught me back then,” he says. “Lou has brought out a different side of me. She reminds me to work to my strengths, to just enjoy and be myself. I think she taught me how to be more free on the track.”
And then there’s Kurt Fearnley, the Paralympic legend and long-time mentor who first told a young McCracken to be a sponge.
“Kurt kind of told me to be a sponge. Not to copy, but to take pieces from everywhere. He was so driven. His work ethic was unbelievable. I definitely took some of that and it helped shape me.”
Now, McCracken is racing with clarity. He knows what drives him — and it’s not legacy or public recognition.
“I just want to win another medal at a Paralympics,” he says. “That’s what drives me.”
If 2023 was about struggle, 2024 about perseverance, 2025 is about resurgence. And looking ahead to the World Championships in New Delhi, McCracken is fuelled by everything he’s rediscovered.
“I definitely could have thought, ‘I’ve done enough,’” he says. “But I wanted to prove to myself that I could win another medal. I wanted to win a medal with Louise, I did that last year at the Paralympic Games and now I want to do better.”
Asked what he’d tell himself during those low moments last year, McCracken doesn’t hesitate.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Be more honest with yourself,” he says. “I delayed my whole year by just not doing that.”
Not anymore. This is Rheed McCracken’s second wind. And he’s making it count.
By Sascha Ryner, Australian Athletics
Posted: 20/6/2025
