James Turner or 'Jimmy' as he prefers to be called, is one of those brilliant athletes who had his athletics beginnings in Little Athletics at the Forster Tuncurry Little Athletics Club at age eight.
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His training and experience became the launching pad for an incredible Paralympic journey.
In time, this young talent joined Athletics Wollongong and was mentored by the now retired super coach Marie Kay.
Jimmy's initial Paralympic debut was supposed to be via a team sport as an Australian representative in football seven-a-side and was an unknown quantity in Para-athletics when he had to make the switch to the track when the Pararoos missed qualification for the 2016 Paralympic Games.
Fortunately, because he had enough notice regarding the Pararoos ineligibility, Jimmy switched to track training in late 2015 to prepare himself for Rio.
He currently trains as part of the Para-Athletics Team in Canberra under former Ukrainian National Coach Iryna Dvoskina. He rigorously trains for at least 20 hours a week, which includes work in the gym on stability and balance exercises. Last year Iryna changed his training schedule to include a lot more explosive work balanced with endurance sessions such as cross-country.
Jimmy's international debut was in Rio in the 2016 Paralympics. His one and only performance was in the Men's T36 800 where he convincingly smashed the standing World record setting a new World record at 2:02.39 and was seven seconds in front of the second place getter.
In 2017 Jimmy contested the International Paralympic Championships in London smashing three track events with firsts in the T36 200m 24.09sec, T36 400m 54.27 sec and in the T36 800m 2:08.78.
In 2019 James reaped the rewards of his hard training schedule by competing in the World Para-athletics Championships in Dubai, UAE, extending his unbeaten run at major events with world titles in the men's 100m T36 11.71 sec and men's 400m T36 51.71 sec.
In Tokyo the 800m has been dropped from theT36 program and Athletics Wollongong congratulates him on winning another gold medal in the 400m final on Tuesday.
Club honour
Athletics Wollongong has made a concerted effort over the past years to promote the Athletics disciplines in an enjoyable and attractive way, and supported the efforts of the very keen to achieve to the maximum of their abilities. There is a very strong team spirit.
These reasons could be why at the recent, Athletics NSW virtual Annual Awards, Athletics Wollongong won the "Club Development Award" for the 2020-21 season.
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