Tough Love(ll) gave Mighty Mali her will to win

It was love, but it was tough love, every time Mel Lovell urged her teary toddler, Mali, to push the little wooden wheelbarrow loaded with bricks to the top of the family’s steep 50 metre long driveway.

 ‘One more time!’

The hill drill was a daily ritual, and while her daughter’s rare form of cerebral palsy didn’t allow her at the time to communicate through speech, Mali’s tears and loud sobs made it clear she hated every step of this . . . torture.

And while Mel wanted to give in to her maternal instinct and blanket her daughter in a loving hug, she gritted her teeth and pushed Mali to take one more painful step . . . and then another . . . and another.

The drill was a necessity after a doctor had diagnosed the first-born child of Mel and Dave with ataxia, a rare form of cerebral palsy which affects a person’s balance and co-ordination.

And while the pediatrician told the two anxious parents ‘she’s never going to be an Olympian’ as he explained the diagnosis to them, their main concerns were ensuring their daughter would one day attend a mainstream school, speak, and not use sign language to communicate, and walk without a frame.

They were the reasons Mel oversaw with a drill sergeant-like strictness Mali’s routine of pushing the wheelbarrow up a driveway that may as well have been Mount Everest to her.

“Mali had been having therapy since she was nine months old with the Cerebral Palsy Alliance,” said Mel. “She’s always had to work hard at everything, and we’d go there twice a week for her occupational therapy and speech therapy because she was using sign language to communicate.

“We used the Toy Library where you could borrow toys to make the therapies more interesting, and there was a little wooden wheelbarrow. We have a 50m long driveway and she would have these little AFOs (ankle-foot orthoses) on her, and they helped to strengthen Mali’s ankles as she pushed the wheelbarrow up to the top.

“She cried all the way up, and while I felt terrible, I’d say, ‘keep going’ and she would. She just kept going.

“It makes me sound like a horrible witch – but it had to be done. In the end we needed to put bricks in the wheelbarrow [for balance] because she’d otherwise fall over. I know it makes me sound terrible, but we had to do it.

“Back then not doing it would mean Mali would be in a walker, not being able to speak. It had to be done because . . . it had to be done.”

Now aged 19 and beaming with the World Para Athletics Championships silver medal for the 200m T36 sprint event draped over her neck, Mali is proof her parents’ determination to give their daughter every chance to have what others take for granted was well placed.

Lovell’s race plan when she headed into the final in Paris last month was to run a Personal Best, and she admitted with an endearing breathlessness that her feat of finishing with the silver blew her mind.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” said the New South Wales Institute of Sport (NSWIS) scholarship athlete. “I was hoping to get a PB but to do that and get second in the world is unbelievable. I raced Danielle Aitchison [the New Zealand athlete who won the gold] at the Nationals last April and I was pretty close to her. Now I want to get even closer!”

Lovell speaks lovingly of her family support, and of the constant encouragement she’s received from her coaches Katie Edwards and Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, a three-time Olympian who won gold for the 200m at the 1995 World Indoor Championships in Barcelona.

She also speaks affectionately of her tight knit athletics squad at Narrabeen which includes 2022 World U20 Athletics competitor, Olivia Inkster, a good friend who actively encouraged Mali to take up athletics.

“I’ve been with Katie and Mel since I was 12 – that’s seven years, so it is a long time,” said Lovell. “And they love teaching me because I think they see how dedicated I am. I show up every session.”

Her mum points out what it meant to Mali – and the family – to receive the congratulatory text messages that were sent in the early morning hours from Australia after her performance at the championships.

“That was very special,” said Mel. “And Mali knows not everyone has that [kind of support].”

When asked for her mother’s place in it all, Mali grins when she says, ‘Mum’s my personal Uber driver’. Then, after a pregnant pause, she revealed she gives athletics her all because of how much her mum, dad – the entire family – take from her efforts.

“It’s very special,” she said of the love and support she enjoys. “They’ve loved watching me run ever since I started, and I’ve loved every minute of training. I want to train hard. Train hard, do my best.”

“I started focussing on running when I tried to qualify for Tokyo and missed out by zero point one of a second. It was a disappointment, but it made me more determined to train for Paris – and beyond.

“I finished Year 12 last year and I’ll focus on the Paris Paralympics, so that means another year of training and trying to find a part-time job.”

‘Lightning’ Lovell also acts as an inspiration to the group of female primary school children who attend the Cerebral Palsy Sports Department to help with their base running.

She now wants to use her status as a World Para Athletics Championship medallist to inspire youngsters just as her idol, Madison de Rozario did her. She has the opportunity through her running to prove anything is possible if you have heart and the willingness to have a go.

Her mother laughed as she recalled Mali’s ‘fan girl’ moment when she attended the NSWIS gym for the first time and spotted de Rozario training. “And then we were at Paris together as teammates,” beamed Mali of her hero.

NSWIS strength and conditioning coach Billy Macklin said there was an “enormous pride” throughout the Institute about Lovell’s feat.

“Mali has been super dedicated to her training and performance – and that shows with her result in Paris.” said Macklin, pictured above with Lovell. “She’s been so consistent over the last 18 months to two years.

“She’s never missed a session. Mali turns up and she pushes herself and the results are showing. We’re looking forward to next year where we hope to see Mali go even bigger and better.”

While Mel smiles as her daughter recounts her memories of Paris – chocolate croissants and orange juice for breakfast, the Eiffel Tower, climbing to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, the streetscape, hunting down her pre-race dinner of a ‘PB lasagna’ in the heartland of French cuisine, and of wearing her Australian tracksuit with pride in a city built on chic and fashion labels – she reflects on the deep love . . . the fear . . . that drove her to make Mali push that cursed wheelbarrow over and over again.

“Mali was my first child and people say you’re blissfully ignorant with your first one, because you don’t know about the milestones,” she said. “We thought she was the perfect baby because she’d just sit in our arms.

“She didn’t do those things babies do, roll and bounce. Mali was just so stiff, and I thought ‘she must like [being in our arms]’. I guess from six months we knew, and at nine months we started with early intervention which is the key.

“There was a lot of sad times – lots of [medical] tests. We’d go through these tests over and over again and it was horrible, really horrible. But Mali, she always did it with a smile . . .

“The one thing I wish is that I could go back in time and tell myself everything would be okay. And it really is.”

Daniel Lane, NSWIS