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Giru para shot putter Ainsley Hooker has secured her spot at July’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, six years after an amputation she feared would end her competitive sporting career for good. Photo credit: Invictus Australia
Giru para shot putter Ainsley Hooker has secured her spot at July’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, six years after an amputation she feared would end her competitive sporting career for good.
Hooker was officially named to the 24-strong Australian Para Athletics squad last week, joining 16 other debutants at the 2026 edition of the quadrennial sporting event.
She said the announcement brought a whirlwind of emotions, with sheer disbelief the most prominent.
“You wait and you wait for that email to come through, or the phone call, and you're checking and checking. It finally comes through, and you sort of go, ‘Really? Did I read that right?’” she said.
Hooker’s selection follows a successful qualification process, which saw her named among 30 athletes eligible for international classification before climbing the world rankings with strong performances in Canberra, Brisbane, Townsville and Bowen.
Her qualification means she will represent Australia for the third time in her career after donning the green and gold at the 2023 Invictus Games in Germany and the 2024 Warrior Games in the USA.
She said Commonwealth Games selection had eclipsed every previous achievement in her para sporting career.
“This is going to be a completely different experience to anything I’ve ever done,” she said.
“When I see and get hold of that green and gold uniform, I probably will be in tears.”
Brisbane-born Hooker spent much of her childhood in sport before joining the Australian Army as a reservist in 2007 and later transitioning to full-time service with the Royal Australian Corps of Transport.
An ankle injury suffered during an Army obstacle course later that year derailed her military career and eventually led to her medical discharge in 2013.
Years of failed surgeries and chronic pain followed before Hooker elected to undergo a below-knee amputation in 2020—a decision she now calls “the best she’s ever made."
“13 years of walking around with a bunged leg was slowly wrecking the rest of the body and killing it off. I thought, amputating it can’t be any worse than this,” she said.
“The first time putting a prosthetic leg on and taking my first steps pain free was incredible. It was the best decision that I ever made.”
She said that while the amputation was successful, it brought doubts about her future in sport.
“When I lost my leg, that was it. I spent years with this injury where I couldn't do anything. I was pretty much a hermit; stuck in the house, didn't leave, couldn't do anything,” she said.
"I thought my life in sport was completely over. Nobody really knows about adaptive sports. That’s where Invictus Australia came in, they showed me all of it.
“There’s wheelchair basketball, seated volleyball, archery. There are some incredible archers who use their mouth or their feet, and that’s all adaptive sport. It was sort of a ‘wow’ moment. Life’s not over. There’s more I can do.”
Hooker’s renewed confidence prompted her to apply for the Invictus Games 2023 selection camp, where she would claim gold in athletics and bronze in wheelchair rugby for Team Australia.
She later backed up those performances at the Warrior Games in Florida, where she competed in shot put and discus against some of the world’s leading adaptive athletes.
Hooker now heads to Glasgow confident of putting up a fight against the world’s elite, training daily in her Giru backyard ahead of the Games.
“I've been keeping a track of the world rankings and how they're throwing, and some of those girls—holy hell, they can launch that ball,” she said.
“I'm aiming to at least throw eight metres. I’m feeling that'll get me comfortably in that middle pack, maybe third, given what I've been seeing in the world ranking.
“But overall, I'm planning on just going, having fun and doing my damn best.”
With preparations for Glasgow now underway, Ainsley and her family have launched a fundraising campaign to help cover travel and competition expenses. If you’d like to help support Ainsley as she waves the Burdekin flag in Glasgow, please follow the link below:
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