John Maclean (sportsperson)

John Maclean

2000 Australian Paralympic Team portrait of Maclean
Personal information
Full name	John Alexander Maclean
Nationality	Australia
Born	(1966-05-27) 27 May 1966 (age 51) Caringbah, Australia
Website	johnmclean.com.au
Medal record Rowing Paralympic Games 2008 Beijing Mixed Double Sculls TAMix2x

John Alexander Maclean, OAM (born 27 May 1966) is an Australian triathlete, rower, and motivational speaker. A promising rugby league player in his youth, he became a paraplegic after being knocked from his bicycle by a truck in 1988. He subsequently became the first paraplegic to finish the Ironman World Championship and the first to swim the English Channel. Later, he was part of the athletics team at both the Olympics and Paralympics in 2000, and won a silver medal in rowing at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. In 2014, he completed the Nepean Triathlon without using a wheelchair, after regaining some use of his legs through Ware K Tremor therapy. He is the founder of the John Maclean Foundation, which assists wheelchair users under the age of 18. As a motivational speaker, his clients have included eBay and Pfizer.

Maclean was born on 27 May 1966 in the Sydney suburb of Caringbah, as the youngest of three children. His parents had emigrated from Scotland in July 1965. His mother, Avril, had schizophrenia, and he was initially raised in foster homes; Avril's social worker wrote in relation to John that his mother "told sister she didn't mind the other children but can't bear the baby, aged 14 months". She committed suicide at The Gap when John was four. He grew up in the Sydney suburb of Tregear. As a young man, he played rugby as a reserve-grade player for the Penrith Panthers and competed in triathlons.

On 27 June 1988, while he was training for the Nepean Triathlon, an eight-ton truck hit his bicycle from behind; he was left with a broken back and pelvis, two broken arms, broken ribs and a punctured lung, and was rendered an incomplete paraplegic.

In 1994 Maclean completed the Nepean Triathlon for which he had been training before the accident, becoming Australia's first paraplegic triathlete. Inspired by television footage of Jon Franks, a wheelchair competitor at the 1994 Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, he became the first paraplegic to complete the course in 1995. That year, he was also part of the Australia men's national wheelchair basketball team training squad for the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics, but withdrew to concentrate on the World Ironman Championship. He participated in the ironman competition twice more in 1996 and 1997, and became the first paraplegic to complete the course before the cut-off time for able-bodied competitors in the latter year. On 30 August 1998, McLean became the first paraplegic to swim the English Channel, with a time of 12 hours and 55 minutes; an attempt earlier in the month was aborted due to bad weather. The Channel Swimming Association initially refused to recognise his feat, but set up a committee to evaluate "special swims" once they were convinced that he was a serious swimmer. A documentary, Against Wind and Tide, was made about his channel crossing. He was the first man to both swim the English Channel and compete in the Ironman World Championship.