Katie Kelly carving a name as top paratriathlete

If you were to look at the ITU career of Australia’s Katie Kelly, it would look like a storybook debut. In just her first year competing at the elite ITU level for paratriathlon, she not only won every single race she contended in, but she also ended her season by becoming the 2015 World Champion for the PT5 sport class. But if you were to ask Kelly, what she makes out of her inaugural year, she would tell you it was just the pinnacle result of over five years of competition and hard work.

According to Kelly, her story is just getting started.

Born with a degenerative disease that has slowly downgraded her eyesight to a legally blind state, Kelly came into her own in paratriathlon after having years of experience with the sport. Before fully committing to the paratri elite field, she had spent the previous five years doing many different triathlons and marathons, including the Alice Springs Marathon, the Port Macquarie Ironman in 2013, as well as the Darwin Triathlon Long Course and the Midnight Sun Marathon held in Norway in 2014.

“What was incredible was that despite losing my eyesight there was still a way for me to keep doing what I love doing. The day I was told my eyesight had deteriorated to the point of being ‘legally blind’ was the very same day I rang Triathlon Australia to inquire about competing as a Vision Impaired athlete,” said Kelly about transitioning into the new sport opportunity. “I thought to myself, ‘If I can, then let’s find out if there was a way that I could keep competing and doing triathlons’ – and then it turned out to be much more than I ever expected.”

More than she expected was that not only was Kelly a natural when it came to adapting to the sport, but she thrived. By joining forces with two-time ITU World Champion and Australian Olympic medallist Michellie Jones to act as her companion and guide, she went on to win her first World Paratriathlon Event race in the Sunshine Coast. She didn’t stop there. She then continued on and earned gold WPE medals in Yokohama and Iseo-Franciacorta and was crowned the PT5 Australian National Champion.

Making a name for herself in a sport that many would have thought was impossible to carry on with, Kelly ended 2015 with one final race held in Chicago that ultimately capped off a seamlessly perfect season. With Jones by her side, she was crowned the PT5 Paratriathlon World Champion.

“I could never had possibly ever imagined that I would find myself in the space of 12…