Kate McLoughlin will lead our Paralympic team proudly on 28 August in her role as chef de mission
Getting to know a team of close to 160 athletes can’t be easy, but Australia’s Paralympic team chef de mission Kate McLoughlin sees it as a crucial part of her job. She has spent much of the year travelling the country, getting to know the athletes, their coaches and support staff. “Relationships are so crucial when you are leading a team of that size,” Kate says. “I don’t ever want to go to a Games and not know who someone is when I walk around the corner. If they’ve had a tough day I want to be able to go up to them and say: ‘How did you go today?’”
The Paris Paralympics will be Kate’s fourth as chef de mission. She became the first female chef de mission to be appointed by Paralympics Australia for Rio in 2016, after which she was awarded ‘best official’ by the International Paralympic Committee. She has worked on eight Paralympic Games, both summer and winter, playing a pivotal support role. The Paris Paralympics will run from 28 August to 8 September.
“I feel like I’m not critically important to their success because that’s where their coach fits in,” Kate says. “But I guess hopefully I’m someone that they feel they can come to and say, ‘I’m having a problem with this, this isn’t working’. Or just trying to make sure the environment that they’re training or competing in is as close to what it would be like at home as possible. And just to make them feel at ease, so all they have to worry about is what they need to do on the field of play.”
Kate says her fondest memories of Paralympic Games have been staying up late at night to congratulate athletes who have won medals – with the London 2012 Games a highlight.
She recalls freestyle swimmer Maddi Elliot, who was 13 at the time and the youngest Australian to win a gold medal at the Paralympics, returning to the village after her win. “It was just so lovely being able to share that with her and share her excitement and help her call her mum,” Kate recalls.
It’s a complex job as Kate also manages the logistics of transporting the athletes and their gear to the Paralympics. “The whole process started way back last year,” she says. “We did a roadshow in every state and territory to get sizes of all potential athletes.”
The 36,000 pieces of uniform are ordered a year out from the games, so they need to ‘guess as to what the team might look like’.
Four six-metre containers have left for Paris, containing food like vegemite and tuna, Paralympic sporting equipment, wheelchairs and more. Plus there are flights and transfers to organise – along with four horses bound for Paris. “Each horse needs a passport,” Kate adds. Who would have thought!
As Kate heads to Paris, her husband Shane and sons Dylan, 12 and Brody, 10, will watch on from home in Cromer. She says the Aussie Paralympic team will put in a fantastic effort.
“I think the challenges they’ve had to overcome in their lives, regardless of whether they’ve been born with their impairment or whether they’ve acquired their impairment, the strength of their wills, their tenacity – and then on top of that, their training as elite athletes, just the same as the Olympic athletes – they’re just extraordinary human beings.”
Watch the Paralympic games on Nine from 28 August to 8 September.