What we can learn from Kieran Modra’s determination and spirit against the odds
Kieran Modra was told he wasn’t allowed to march in the opening ceremony at the Beijing Paralympics, but walked onto the stadium anyway. It was the sort of defiance that was the making of him as an athlete and a person.
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Australia’s cycling team was banned from marching in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, so sports director Jason Hellwig got a shock when Kieran Modra walked over and shook his hand in the mustering area just moments before they entered the arena.
“G’day Jase,” Modra offered, along with his hand, as if everything was completely normal.
It was September 6 inside the Beijing National Stadium and Modra - like the rest of the cycling team - had been told that they were not to march in the opening ceremony because they were competing on the velodrome the following day.
“Mate, why are you here?” Hellwig responded.
“You don’t expect me to miss this do ya?” Modra replied.
“Well yes, I do, your coach has set the rule mate,” Hellwig fired back.
“Well, what do you want me to do then?” Modra said with a cheeky grin.
Realising Modra had come too far to be turned back to the athletes’ village now, Hellwig told him he was happy to pretend he never saw him at the opening ceremony providing he deliver a gold medal on the opening day of competition.
And he did.
Less than 24 hours later, Modra teamed up with Tyson Lawrence to win the blind and vision impaired individual pursuit.
“It was a great lesson for me. For most athletes events like opening ceremonies are a distraction and more of an energy sapper. Kieran took energy from it,” Hellwig told the Sunday Mail after news of Modra’s sudden death on Wednesday.
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In many ways that was Modra to a tee. Born with only 15 per cent vision due to optic atrophy, he refused to let anything stop him or take no for an answer.
That he competed in the 1988 Seoul Paralympics in athletics and the 2016 Rio Paralympics as a cyclist is testament to that.
But he was also this big, bundle of endless energy and enthusiasm who refused to stop.
As an athlete, he was a physically imposing specimen.
Strong with muscles protruding through his Lycra skinsuit, his face would grimace as he would grip his bike and put thunderous power through the pedals as he went around the velodrome.
And when meeting him you expected the same sort of character off the bike as well.
Big, bullish, aggressive and loud, but when Modra opened his mouth you got the opposite.
He had a soft voice, he spoke slowly and deliberately as if pondering every word and he smiled so much that his eyes often squinted, and like Hellwig in Beijing, if you were preparing for a confrontation then you were completely disarmed in an instant.
I would have interviewed him a dozen times over the past decade including for a feature story as he prepared for the 2012 London Paralympics with tandem rider Scott McPhee.
Modra and McPhee were dubbed the odd couple.
A 40-year-old visually impaired father of three sharing a bike with a 20-year-old uni student and together they were producing 2500 watts.
The world’s best sprinter at the time Sir Chris Hoy used to hit between 2000-2500 in a race, so Modra and McPhee weren’t able to ride a flashy, lightweight carbon framed bike because that sort of power with their combined weight of 150kg caused mechanics to fear they would snap it.
Modra had no right to even make it to London after a cycling accident involving a car in December 2011 left him with a broken neck, but five weeks later he left hospital with a walking frame and was back on his bike.
He and McPhee would go on to defend the individual pursuit Paralympic gold medal in London.
“I think it was just defiance of not letting the injury take hold,” Modra said at the time.
Australian Paralympic Committee officials had several discussions with Modra about him riding on the roads after his crash leading into London, but it was just what Modra did, as if it was part of his DNA, and he had such a love for the sport and appetite for the work that he would simply push on.
I was in the velodrome in Glasgow in 2014 when he teamed up with Jason Niblett to race Scottish pair Neil Fachie and Craig McLean for gold at the Commonwealth Games and the roar from the crowd was deafening - louder than any of the able-bodied events that had happened before them.
Modra and Niblett finished second, but Modra came off the track still flashing that beaming smile that was as bright as any gold medal would have been anyway.
But the one interview with him that will live in my memory forever was in 2013 when he had his photo taken with his then 14-year-old daughter Holly, who like her dad was born with only 15 per cent vision and had followed him into cycling where she had just become national champion.
“I really like how dad has all the best cycling things to give you,” Holly said at the time.
Modra didn’t say anything, but the smile on the face of a proud father said it all.
News of his sudden death after a collision with a car north of Adelaide this week came as a shock.
Tens of thousands of people must ride their bikes every day across South Australia, but the cycling community is in fact quite small.
Not in size, but in degrees of separation.
So whenever there is news of a cyclist injured on our roads, those within the cycling community instantly wonder if it’s someone they know, putting together the pieces of information such as where the crash happened, the age and sex of the cyclist.
This time, it was someone everyone knew.
Not just in the cycling community but in society more broadly, because in his 47 years Modra touched and inspired so many who can learn a lot about what is possible if when people tell you no, you’re prepared to say yes.
reece.homfray@news.com.au
Originally published as What we can learn from Kieran Modra’s determination and spirit against the odds