| Personal information | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Brendan John Dowler | ||||||||||||
| Nationality | Australia | ||||||||||||
| Born | January 31, 1968 | ||||||||||||
|
Medal record
|
|||||||||||||
Brendan John Dowler, OAM[1] (born 31 January 1968) is a wheelchair basketball player from Australia who won a gold medal at the 2008 Summer Paralympics and the 2010 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship.
Contents |
Dowler was born on 31 January 1968,[2] and resides in Illawarra, New South Wales.[3] He is from Corrimal, New South Wales, has four siblings and is married.[2] He attended university, earning a degree in IT.[2] He became a paraplegic as a result of a spinal tumour.[2] When not playing basketball, he is a business analyst. One of his heroes is Andrew Graze.[2] '
In 2008, at the time of the Games, he was working for Pillar Administration.[4] He was still working with the company in 2009.[5]
Dowler is classified as a 1.0 player. He started playing wheelchair basketball in 1995.[2]
Dowler first represented Australia in 2001[3][2] and has had over 100 caps for the team.[4]
Dowler was considered for selection for the 2000 Summer Paralympics but did not make it.[6]
He was part of the silver medal winning Australia men's national wheelchair basketball team [7] at the 2004 Summer Paralympics.[8] He was part of the gold medal winning Australia men's national wheelchair basketball team[9] at the 2008 Summer Paralympics.[8]
In 2003, Dowler played club basketball for the NWBL's Wollongong Roller Hawks. The team played in the NWBL Championship and won.[6] That year, he was named one of the NWBL's All-Star Five.[6]
Dowler has done public speaking. In November 2008, he and Brett Stibners spoke at the Sydney Business School's annual Town and Gown function.[3]
In 2004, Dowler and Tristan Knowles were awarded the title of Illawarra Mercury Sports Star of the Year Award.[6] In 2009, Dowler received the Medal of the Order of Australia "For service to sport as a gold medallist at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games".[1]