Article by Julian Linden, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph.
Tim Hodge’s parents were right all along.
When he was just a little kid, still recovering in hospital after having his right foot amputated, he was feeling so helpless that he confided in his mum and dad that he didn’t think he would ever amount to anything.
They reassured him he was wrong and that losing part of a limb would not prevent him from achieving whatever he set his heart on. The trick was figuring out what he was good at.
Hodge wasn’t convinced. On the day he was being taken to hospital for the operation to remove his foot he pleaded with his parents to call it off. He was four years old.
They had already seen different specialists, hoping one would come up with a different diagnosis. But each doctor said amputation was the best remedy because he was born without the fibula bone in his lower right leg, which meant things would get worse as he grew.
It took a few years after the surgery but Hodge discovered he was really good at swimming.
So good, in fact, that by the age of 14, he was selected to swim for Australia at his first para world championships. At 15, he was off to the Paralympics in Rio.
Hodge, 23, has won world championships and set world records but Paralympic gold eluded him at Rio and Tokyo.
But in Paris he’s won two gold medals, the first in relay and now a second in the 200m individual medley.
“Everyone’s got something that they’re good at,” Hodge said.
“Like my parents told me, you’ve just got to find what it is. “The important part is really picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and trying again.
“It might be trying the same sport, the same
event again.
It might be trying something new, something completely different that you’ve never tried before.
But there’s always something out there for everyone.”
Hodge finished second in the 200m medley at the last Paralympics but has been in a class of his own since, winning backto-back world championships in 2022 and 2023.
He went into Paris as the odds-on favourite to win the gold after breaking his own world record at the Australian trials in June.
Hodge, from Blacktown in Sydney’s west, set the fastest qualifying time in the heats and cruised to
victory in Friday morning’s final, leading all the way to win comfortably.
“After the relay earlier in the meet, I knew I had to kind of bring myself back down, bring myself back into the right headspace to race and I was able to do that and I’m very, very happy with the result,” he said.
“Everyone has low points in their life. I guess the measure of a truly resilient, truly inspiring person isn’t necessarily what their best is, it’s that they can keep doing better than what they did before.”
