{"id":535904,"date":"2026-03-12T16:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T16:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/535904\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T16:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T16:46:10","slug":"liana-france-becomes-australias-youngest-female-winter-paralympian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/535904\/","title":{"rendered":"Liana France becomes Australia\u2019s youngest female winter Paralympian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loading<\/p>\n

France brought that small checklist with her to the Paralympics so that this week, she could finally get an official to tick the final box.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho would have ever thought that the nine-year-old Liana who said \u2018I want to go to the Olympics\u2019, and changed to the Paralympics after the accident, that we\u2019ve been able to get her and support her to get this far? She\u2019s absolutely amazing,\u201d her mum said.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s best friend, Ella, was in the crowd to watch too after making a promise as children that if either made it to this stage, the other would be there.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s such an inspiration for everyone. I think, especially for women. She\u2019s such a feminist too so she would love this,\u201d Ella said. \u201cShe\u2019s everything that she wants to be. I know she\u2019s inspired me at least, and I know she\u2019s inspired her sister, and I know she\u2019s inspired about a billion other people. Just the fact that she\u2019s gotten back up and gotten on the snow and gone \u2018nup, won\u2019t stop me\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

France made her Paralympic debut alongside teammate 22-year-old Georgia Gunew and her guide Ethan Jackson, 25. One poster in the crowd wrote \u201cyeah the girls\u2026 and Ethan\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Georgia<\/p>\n

Georgia Gunew and her guide Ethan Jackon, compete in the women\u2019s giant slalom.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cEthan is one of the girls,\u201d Gunew said.<\/p>\n

Like France, Gunew grew up skiing but lost her vision at 15 when diagnosed with Stargardt\u2019s macular dystrophy. Gunew reaches speeds up to 100km\/h while being legally blind and does so with the help of Jackson who wears a fluoro vest and bluetooth headset to help guide her down the mountain.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great skiing with Liana too. I\u2019m so stoked,\u201d Gunew said. \u201cI\u2019ve never had another female competitor from Australia in the same day as me in the whole time I\u2019ve been skiing with the team. So it\u2019s been so cool. She\u2019s very young and energetic and always has something a bit funny to say, so I love having her on the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

France placed 15th of 22 and Gunew 11th of 15 in the women\u2019s giant slalom standing and vision impaired categories respectively. Both compete again in the women\u2019s slalom on Saturday \u2013 their preferred events.<\/p>\n

\"Georgia<\/p>\n

Georgia Gunew and Ethan Jackson embrace after the finish line of the giant slalom.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to jinx myself, but this is my first games at 16. So in the future, I would say that I\u2019m definitely one to watch from Australia,\u201d France said.<\/p>\n

This masthead has travelled to Cortina as a guest of Paralympics Australia.<\/p>\n

The Winter Paralympic Games is broadcast on the Nine Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Loading France brought that small checklist with her to the Paralympics so that this week, she could finally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-535904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}