Jonathon Milne

Started: He took up the sport at age 27 at Sydney Olympic Park in Australia. "I bought my first bow in February 2013, just after I had my accident. The rehab centre I was in was about 10 minutes up the road from Sydney Olympic Park Archers so that's where I joined." (Athlete, 23 Aug 2015; psearchery.com.au, 08 Mar 2020) Reason: He used archery to keep himself busy during rehabilitation. "I picked up archery after my accident because I spent about six months in rehab. I always enjoyed being outside. It was something to keep me occupied. I didn't want to sit around and watch TV." (Athlete, 23 Aug 2015; bluemountainsgazette.com.au, 21 Oct 2019; nswis.com.au, 21 Jul 2023) Additional Info: DISTANCE COACHING While training during the COVID-19 pandemic he was able to receive coaching through an app produced by Paralympics Australia called 'Paralympic Connect'. "One of Paralympics Australia's skills acquisition guys, he's in South Australia, and every Friday he jumps on and we have a group training session. His job is to design training programmes that put me under 'tournament pressure' and to work out how that affects my shooting and what we can try to do to mitigate that stress. Because when your heart rate gets up, it changes the feeling of everything in a sport like archery. So you have to put yourself in those situations during training, so that when you get to a tournament, you're not trying to figure it all out on the run. So like I said, because he's based in South Australia, it's a big help for him to be able to jump on Paralympic Connect and be able to just watch the training session, get that visual feedback, and get a better idea of what he can do to change it up, to put more pressure on." (paralympic.org.au, 17 Jul 2020) COACHING He has held a supporting coaching role in the Australian national Para archery team. "I have started doing some coaching with other archers that have come to me for help. I'm really enjoying seeing them improve. I want to see them get the same enjoyment out of it as what I've done." (paralympic.org, 15 Jan 2019)