Alison Smith’s sharp shooting instincts memorably took her to the Big Apple, to compete successfully for an air rifle bronze medal in the 1984 Paralympic Games.
Four decades on, in the same year that Ryman is celebrating its 40th anniversary, Alison is keeping a close eye on the Paris 2024 Paralympics Games along with fellow residents at Ryman’s Diana Isaac Village.
For Alison it was a memorable Games, not the least seeing President Ronald Reagan officially opening the New York event supported by heavy security, she remembers. More than three years earlier, in March 1981, Reagan was the subject of an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. outside the Washington Hilton.
Alison remembers that at the Games, Reagan remained within a very tight protective cordon. “The big excitement was the President of the United States was arriving via helicopter to open the Games. I had never seen so many policemen, and snipers on top of the buildings… four helicopters arrived, hovering over the stadium. Eventually one landed and out hopped Ronald Reagan along with his entourage,” she says.
“A lot of us had never seen anything like that... looking around and seeing all these guys in dark clothing with their rifles at the ready.”
While Alison was competing in New York, back in Christchurch, Ryman co-founders Kevin Hickman and John Ryder were laying the foundation for what would become a network of 40 villages across New Zealand and 8 in Victoria, Australia. On 19 September, Alison, along with fellow residents, will be celebrating Ryman’s 40th anniversary at special events being held at each village.
Alison is now enjoying life in a townhouse at Diana Isaac Village in Mairehau and watching events in Paris. Other residents are well aware of her Paralympics efforts especially now the 2024 Games are under way.
There were lots of other highlights on the 1984 trip to the East Coast of the United States. She and other Kiwi competitors were provided accommodation at Hofstra University campus in Hempstead, New York.
The accommodation was by no means up to the standard of Paralympians today, but Alison has no regrets about travelling such distances and making the most of the facilities available at the time.
Alison is the first and only female Shooting Para athlete to date to have represented New Zealand at a Paralympic Games. Her effort saw her take home a bronze medal was in the Women’s Air Rifle Integrated.
Alison says every four years the Games remind her of her mid-80s adventure both in terms of accommodation and transport to the venue though obviously times have changed.
“When I went it was pretty basic,” she laughs. “We were in New York and stayed in a university campus... for transport they took the seats out of one of the yellow school buses and of course you weren’t wearing seat belts or that sort of thing, so you sort of held on for grim death.”
She remembers travelling alongside two other Kiwi paralympians, athlete Michael O’Callaghan and field eventer Denise Cook, to and from the events. She stays in regular contact with both.
She got into air rifle shooting via her membership of the Canterbury Paraplegic Association, starting at first in the field of archery, with disabled Kiwi athlete Neroli Fairhall. Then in the late 1970s she joined in with a memorable ‘games night’. One of the air rifle tutors, at the Ollivers Road rugby league hall venue for the night she tried the air rifle, later becoming her husband, Len Smith.
Winning the bronze medal of course meant a phone call home to New Zealand, to share her incredible news with her parents, brother and three sisters.
In those days the games were only set up for paraplegic and quadriplegic competitors rather than those with a much wider range of disabilities. “I competed in a three-positional shoot competition: prone, kneeling, and standing, all from the wheelchair. It was 60 shots in each position… I proudly came home with a bronze medal,” Alison says.
In 1984 another competitor was Cantabrian Graham Condon. Importantly Graham helped source a wheelchair for Alison, from Healing Industries at a discount, to make her sporting achievements easier.
Alison is upfront about her life. She was born on September 13, 1950 minus her right leg, from the hip, and the left, from the upper third of the thigh, starting life with artificial limbs. Recently, Alison was proud to be recognised as New Zealand’s ‘no. 53 Paralympian’.