Australia competed at the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens, Greece. It was Australia's 12th year of participation at the Paralympics. The team included 151 athletes (91 men and 60 women). Australian competitors won 101 medals (26 gold, 39 silver and 36 bronze) to finish fifth in the gold medal table and second on the total medal table. Australia competed in 12 sports and won medals in 8 sports. The Chef de Mission was Paul Bird. The Australian team was smaller than the Sydney Games due to a strict selection policy related to the athletes' potential to win a medal and the International Paralympic Committee's decision to remove events for athletes with an intellectual disability from the Games due to issues of cheating at the Sydney Games. This was due to a cheating scandal with the Spanish intellectually disabled basketball team in the 2000 Summer Paralympics where it was later discovered that only two players actually had intellectual disabilities. The IPC decision resulted in leading Australian athletes such as Siobhan Paton and Lisa Llorens not being able to defend their Paralympic titles. The 2000 Summer Paralympic Games hosted in Sydney Australia proved to be a milestone for the Australian team as they finished first on the medal tally for the first time in history. In comparing Australia's 2000 Paralympic performance and their 2004 performance, it is suggested that having a home advantage might affect performance.

Outstanding performers Swimmer Matthew Cowdrey at age 15, was the youngest member of the Australian Paralympic Team, and at his first Paralympic Games he won three gold, two silver and two bronze medals, and finished the meet with two World & Paralympic Record times. His amazing achievements were recognised and he received the Medal of the Order of Australia, were named Young Paralympian of the Year at the Australian Paralympian of the Year Awards and Swimmer of the Year with a Disability by Swimming Australia. Swimmer Chantel Wolfenden, also in her first ever Paralympic Games, won gold, silver and four bronze during the games while also setting a new personal record in the 400m Freestyle. For her great accomplishments she received the Medal of the Order of Australia Prue Watt, another first time Paralympian swimmer, established herself as one of the most successful Australian athletes during the 2004 Games, winning five silver medals and one bronze medal. To honor her accomplishments she was awarded the 2004 Female Junior Paralympian of the Year for her achievements Tim Sullivan won four gold medals in athletics sprints events, three of which were individual and two of which involved new world records. To celebrate his amazing achievements, he was named Australian Paralympian of the Year by the Australian Paralympic Committee [APC], and won the Victorian Institute of Sport's [VIS] Athlete with a Disability Award Ben Austin won four individual medals as a swimmer, one gold, two silver and one bronze. He was also part of the 4 × 100 m Freestyle Relay team and 4 × 100 m Medley Relay where they won silver and gold In the 100m freestyle he became one of the first ever swimmers in the S8 category to break the one minute barrier. For his accomplishments at the 2004 Games he received the Medal of the Order of Australia Cyclist Lindy Hou qualified for her first Paralympic Games in 2004 with pilots Janelle Lindsay and Toireasa Gallagher. The Games became a huge success and she won a total of four medals, one gold, two silver and one bronze. She and Janelle Lindsey also became the first Australian female athletes to win gold during the 2004 Paralympic games. They also set the world record in the Women's 200m Fly with the time 11.675 seconds. Her accomplishments were celebrated with the Medal of the Order of Australia Heath Francis won two individual silver medals and one bronze medal. He was also part of the Men's 4 × 400 m T42-T46 relay team and Men's 4 × 100 m T42-T46 where they won silver and bronze. Some of the other outstanding Australian athletes included: Six athletes won three medals - Don Elgin, Neil Fuller, Kurt Fearnley and Darren Thrupp in athletics and Kieran Modra and Christopher Scott in cycling.

Background of the Athens Games

The 2004 Summer Paralympics, formally known as Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, was held from September 17 to September 28. The twelfth Paralympic Games, a total of 3,808 competitors (2,643 Men and 1,165 Women) from 135 countries participated. During these games 304 World Records were broken with 448 Paralympic Games Records being broken across 19 different sports. Addition of judo and sitting volleyball for women and football 5-a-side for men were included. The ticket sale for event saw a decrease in tickets sold, with about 850.000 tickets for the different competitions compared to 1.2 million sold at the 2000 Sydney games. The event was made possible through the help of 8,863 volunteers

Opening and closing ceremony

Louise Sauvage, a nine-time Paralympic gold medalist, lit the cauldron during the opening ceremonies for the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney. On September 17, 2004, Sauvage carried the Australian flag into the opening ceremony stadium, "Spyridon Louis", at what was her 4th Paralympic games. She has a Sydney ferry, a street and a pathway named after her, as well as numerous school sport houses around Australia. After the parade of nations, the Games were declared opened by IPC President Sir Philip Craven and Greek president Cistis Stephanopoulos, before the Paralympic flame was lit by Georgios Toptsis. The opening ceremony was seen by 72,000 spectators in the stadium

Swimmer Matthew Cowdrey, recognized for his achievements during the games, was chosen to carry the Australia flag at the Closing Ceremony of the Games. The closing ceremony during the 2004 games was cut short and only entailed the protocol segments required to complete the Games, due to a tragic accident involving the deaths of seven high school students on their way to the Games. One minute of silence in tribute to the school students were held as the Paralympic flag flew half-mast. Australian gold medalist, Katrina Webb, who were critical of the Paralympic Organizers who removed the party element of the closing ceremony and thus leaving only the athletes' entry, the Paralympic President Phil Craven's speech and the handover of the flag to Beijing, said "Things like this happen, you can't stop everything. Life goes on. We should make sure we pay our respects in that regard but things should continue as they were."

The closing ceremony ended with the unveiling of the IPC's new logo

Factors affecting Australia's performance In 2000, Australia hosted both the Olympic and the Paralympic games with the Australian team's performance, more specifically the summer Paralympic team, being remarkable. For the first time in history, Australia placed first on the total medal tally for the summer Paralympics, with a total of 314 medals. This result was studied in the relation to the possibility of athletes having a home advantage, measured using a 'market share', which is measured by dividing the number of total medals won (with gold being 3 points, silver equating to 2 points and bronze being 1 point) by the total number of medals contested at the Paralympic games. In the 2000 games, the Australian team presented a home market share of 9.50%. At the 1996 US Paralympic games prior, Australia's market share was 7.27% and in the 2004 Athens Paralympics, it was 6.15%. It is proposed that there was only a home advantage for a few sports which included athletics, table tennis and wheelchair fencing. An investigation into whether there is a correlation between being communist country and sporting performance verses being a capitalist country and sporting performance was also launched. It has been argued that in communist regimes, a higher amount of resources is allocated to the sports as "communist countries use success in top-level sports to display the benefits of their political system" as well as exhibiting their "internal political stability".

It should also be noted that there are multiple socioeconomic determinants that contribute to a country's performance at the summer Paralympics. Inevitably, success of a country is randomly distributed at the Paralympics. An investigation into these contributing factors has been launched. "While some countries dominate a particular sport discipline, other countries have elite athletes in various sports, or have little or no success in sports at all". It has been proposed that countries that are more economically prosperous than others and have subsequently higher success rates across all sports. These countries are able to invest more resources into top-level sports as well as investing more effort into ensuring they have a healthy population to enable maximum sporting performance. Research has also been conducted on communist countries as it has been proposed that these nations utilise their success in top-level sports to exhibit the benefits of their political system. Expenditure on health and population size both also have a positive correlation on a country's sporting performance. "This reflects a basic law of large numbers in the sense that larger populations will…have more talented athletes". Carrying on, the degree to which a nation supports the integration of a disabled person into the sporting world, is also positively correlated to the nation's success at the Paralympics. The more accommodating and understanding a country is in relation to ensuring disabled individuals have equal access to facilities and services, the increased feelings of inclusive and thus desire to represent their country in sport. Thus, the size of the countries Paralympic team reflects how much political priority is given to support their disabled athletes.

Another factor that affected Australia's performance was the introduction of technological advances that assisted Paralympic athletes in their performance. Prosthetic and wheelchair technology are necessities for citizens with disabilities to conduct their day-to-day activities. However, application of certain technology into the sporting world can prove controversial and be unfair. It has been conducted through research that in the 2008 Beijing games, some track and field athletes in both the Paralympic and Olympic games wore clothing with a specific type of material that provided an unfair advantage. The clothing was manufactured by Nike and contained threads of vectran fibre which was found to "reduce drag by 7% when compared with the 2004 outfits". Thus, it can be argued that some technological advancements that were utilised in the 2004 Paralympic games provided an unfair advantage amongst other participants including Australian parathletes.

Australia's past performance As hosts of the 2000 Olympic and the Paralympic games, the Australian population had high expectations for the Australian athletes in these games. Notably, this was the first Paralympic games ever to be hosted in the Southern hemisphere. Overall, the 2000 Paralympic games attracted 3,879 para athletes, 285 being Australian para athletes. This was 120 more para athletes than the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic team and 134 more than 2004 Athens Paralympic team. The Paralympic games saw 122 nations compete across 18 sports. In total, the Australian team comprised 30 intellectually disabled athletes, which at the time, was the largest number the team had ever had. Overall, there were 20 multiple gold medallists in the team. One notable athlete is Siobhan Paton, a Paralympic swimmer with an intellectual disability, who won the most gold medals than any other Australian in the 2000 games, coming away with 6 in total. However, in the 2004 games she was unable to uphold these titles due to the temporary banning of intellectually disabled athletes.

Development and preparation