Vanessa Low
Vanessa Low in 2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | 17 July 1990 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country | Germany (2009–2017) Australia (2017–present) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Paralympic athletics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coached by | Scott Reardon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Paralympic finals | 2012, 2016, 2020 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Vanessa Low OAM (born 17 July 1990) is a German-born Australian Paralympic athlete competing in T42 sprint and long jump events. Born in East Germany, she gained Australian nationality in June 2017.
In 2016, Low was the only actively competing female track athlete with two above-knee amputations of her legs. Despite the location of these amputations and despite her having to compete with athletes having one fully functional leg, she successfully made it to the finals of all of her sprint and long jump competitions at both the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London and the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio. In Rio she won the gold medal with a 4.93m world record distance in the T42 long jump and a silver medal in the T42 100m competition. This was repeated in the 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo with the T63 long jump gold medal and world record even though she was classified T61.