Louise Sauvage - Early Life

Early Life

When I first started off I was in the human interest pages of the paper – the fact that I did a sport and the article was about my sport didn't matter – I had a disability and it was warm and fuzzy. It wasn't until I made it to where everyone else was, in the sports pages, where any elite athlete deserves to be, that I thought, 'OK they're taking me seriously now, this is good'.

Sauvage, whose father is from the Seychelles and mother is from Leicestershire, was born with a severe congenital spinal condition called myelomeningocele, which inhibits the function of the lower half of the body, giving limited control over the legs. In 1976 she was Perth's Telethon Child as part of a Channel 7 fund-raiser for children with disabilities. She used calipers to help walk until she received her first wheelchair. Her myelomeningocele required her to have 21 surgical operations by the time she was ten years old. As a preteen, Sauvage suffered scoliosis, and at 14, she had surgery to fix a curvature in her spine, using steel rods. The operation was only partially successful, and as an adult, she still has a curve of roughly 49 degrees. She has not had any subsequent surgery to fix the curve in her spine.

Sauvage was born in Perth, Western Australia and grew up in Joondanna, Western Australia, where she attended Hollywood Senior High School before leaving to complete a TAFE course in office and secretarial studies. Her parents encouraged her to participate in sport from a very young age. She started swimming when she was three years old, with her parents enrolling her in swimming classes to help her build upper body strength. Sauvage started to compete in wheelchair sport at the age of eight. Prior to that, she had attempted to play school sport with her class mates but her disability made it difficult. She took up competitive wheelchair racing when she was 15. Sauvage also tried wheelchair basketball as a youngster.