The Calm Smalltown Farmer Preparing To Snowboard For Australia

On a quiet farm just outside the NSW Riverina town of The Rock, life moves to the rhythm of harvests, machinery and the joy of young children.

It’s here, among the barley paddocks, that Para-snowboarder Aaron McCarthy has forged the qualities now defining his rise in sport: steadiness, resilience and the kind of pragmatic optimism that grounds rural Australian life.

Days ago, McCarthy – a New South Wales Institute of Sport scholarship holder – was racing to bring in the barley before boarding a flight to Europe. Now, speaking from The Netherlands, he’s starting his final push towards a dream he once clung to from a hospital bed – representing Australia at the Milano Cortina Paralympic Games.

“I was harvesting barley not even a week ago, rushing to get it off before I left,” he said.

McCarthy and his wife Tahnee have farmed their property since 2019. It’s where their three children are growing up. It’s where, on December 14, 2021, the trajectory of his life changed in seconds.

“I made a mistake and it resulted in my leg being ripped off just below the knee,” he said with a farmer’s clarity.

“I was stuck in the machine for a few minutes. I rang triple zero and they said to put a tourniquet on. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Why didn’t I think of that first?’.

“I do believe I saved my own life. It took half an hour for first responders to get there. If I’d lost any more blood, I reckon I’d have been dead.”

Tahnee found him before emergency services made it to the property. When a police officer arrived, McCarthy reached out his hand.

“I said, ‘Hey mate, how you going? I’m Aaron McCarthy, nice to meet you.’ Whether it was adrenaline, shock, or just my general calm nature…  I’m fortunate to have a pretty calm nature, really.

“It should have killed me, absolutely,” he summed up. “But I knew that if things were going to run smoothly, I needed to stay calm. I took that approach through my recovery too, especially for my family. If they saw me struggling, they would’ve struggled, so I kept it together.”

Fifteen days later, McCarthy left hospital. Within a month, he was back in sport and in the community he loves.

In the wake of the accident, the couple considered selling up. But the land and the lifestyle it provided held their appeal.

“The Rock is a small farming community, about 1500 people,” McCarthy said.

“I went to school there, grew up there, played tennis there. There’s just a couple of shops, a grocery store, a café. The accident never turned me off farming, I still love it. I’m still on the same property where it happened, still doing everything I used to do.”

Things take a little longer now. A prosthetic leg takes up more energy. Overall, however, “I can do absolutely everything I used to. Eventually, you discover that the only limitation is yourself.”

McCarthy didn’t want his involvement in sport to be limited. In fact, it’s gone further than he had ever expected. He played wheelchair tennis immediately after his accident, but it was an ossur mobility clinic in 2022, where he tried Para-snowboarding, that set in motion a new sporting challenge.

“I just loved the freedom it gives you,” McCarthy said of snowboarding.

“It’s something that, as somebody with one leg doing a two-legged sport, it almost shouldn’t happen. It’s the closest thing I’ve felt to having two legs again. Not that I’d ever trade what’s happened. My life now, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

More than a sport, snowboarding became a lifeline.

“It’s probably the one thing that saved me,” he admitted. “I definitely felt myself going down that dark spiral at different times. Having snowboarding kept me out of the ground, I reckon.”

Last European winter, McCarthy represented Australia for the first time. Remarkably, he finished the season as European Cup champion in his classification. If qualified and selected, he’ll head into Milano Cortina with confidence and, all things going to plan, he’ll be part of a snowboarding squad stacked with talent, including Beijing 2022 bronze medallist Ben Tudhope, team captain Sean Pollard, and 2023 world champion Amanda Reid among them.

“Things have progressed really quickly,” he said. “It just shows what dedication and commitment does. Ever since my accident, becoming a Paralympian was the goal. That’s been the driving force to get me here this quick. I want to make it to multiple Games if I can.”

The first event of the season, banked slalom in Landgraaf, is first on the calendar.

“I had some pretty good results on debut here last year. I’m looking to improve on those.”

Cheering him on back home will be Tahnee and the couple’s three children, Noah and George, aged 12 and four, and baby Isabel, who arrived just a month ago.

“My wife’s been my biggest support,” McCarthy said with trademark certainty. “They’ll be there in Italy, Tahnee and the kids, and my mum as well. They haven’t seen me compete before.”

There are brief moments when he wonders how it could all pan out. However, he added, “I try not to get caught up in it. You want to focus on getting there, on all the training. If you don’t put in the work beforehand, you can’t put it in when you’re there.”

McCarthy might have a long and exciting snowboarding career ahead. But he’ll never forget his identity: a smalltown farmer, the calm middle child who didn’t panic when life threw him a wildcard, a man who found freedom on a snowboard when some other parts of his life seemed to narrow.

“Your quality of life is what you make it,” he said. “What happened to me, it’s changed my perspective. Probably given me a better life, to be honest.”

David Sygall, Paralympics Australia