A whopping 435 athletes will represent Australia at this year's Commonwealth Games — 76 para-athletes, eight guides and 351 able-bodied athletes.
When you add it all together, that's a lot of life experience — but when you break it down, some of our competitors have a little more than others.
There's almost 50 years separating the oldest and youngest Australian athletes heading to Birmingham — but 63-year-old Cheryl Lindfield and 14-year-old Charli Petrov are both making their Commonwealth Games debuts.
Here are some of our youngest and oldest competitors and what events to catch them in.
Charli Petrov
- Age: 14
- Sport: Diving
Petrov will be the youngest athlete to don the green and gold in Birmingham, diving in the 10m platform synchro alongside Olympic and Commonwealth Games medallist Melissa Wu, who was just 13 when she won synchro silver at Melbourne 2006. Petrov was named the Australian Most Outstanding New Talent by the Victorian Institute of Sport in 2019, and this competition will be her major international debut:
Cheryl Lindfield
- Age: 63
- Sport: Lawn bowls
Lindfield is set to make her Commonwealth Games debut with bowls partner Serena Bonnell in the B6-B8 women’s pairs. She made her international debut earlier this year and is one of almost a dozen members of the Australian lawn bowls team who will compete at their first Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
Isabella Vincent
- Age: 16
- Sport: Swimming
Vincent will be the youngest member of the Aussie swim squad in Birmingham, and will make her Commonwealth Games debut in the women's 100m S7 backstroke. The high school student was on the silver-medal-winning women's 4x100m freestyle relay team and the women's 4x100m medley relay team, which won bronze, at the Tokyo Paralympics where she was the youngest Australian Paralympian.
Danni Di Toro
- Age: 47
- Sport: Table tennis
You might remember the para-table tennis player as one of the co-captains of the Australian Paralympic Team in Tokyo, but did you remember she started her international sporting career playing wheelchair tennis? Birmingham will be her first Commonwealth Games appearance and she says there's been a big focus among the Para-athletes on making everyone, no matter what sport you play or how experienced you are, feel welcome:
Alex Saffy
- Age: 16
- Sport: Swimming
Keep an eye out for the "Bunbury Bullet" in the men's 100m S10 butterfly, who's fresh off a bronze medal at the world championships last month. Saffy was diagnosed with dyskinetic cerebral palsy at a young age and qualified for the 2020 Paralympic team, but had not yet been internationally classified (a requirement for the Paralympics) so could not compete in Tokyo.
Gerrard Gosens
- Age: 52
- Sport: Triathlon
There's not enough space to list all Gosens's achievements here — but an OAM, climbing Mount Everest, a stint on Dancing with the Stars and three Paralympic Games appearances (in two different disciplines) is a pretty good start. After 30 years of sporting achievements, Birmingham will be his first and last Commonwealth Games, and his final major international competition:
Indiana Cooper
- Age: 16
- Sport: Athletics
The Kurt Fearnley Scholarship recipient is one of nine Indigenous Australians representing the green and gold in Birmingham. She's set to compete in multiple races in the T38 category — she beat the T38 800m age record by more than three seconds at the 2020 NSW All-Schools Carnival, so she's a competitor not to miss.
Jian Fang Lay
- Age: 49
- Sport: Table tennis
Seven Commonwealth Games medals. Six Olympic appearances. Could this be the year Jian Fang Lay finally snags a long-awaited gold medal? She's been playing table tennis since the age of six, and in Birmingham she'll become one of just two Australian women to compete in six straight Commonwealth Games (alongside squash player Rachael Grinham).
Anthony Jordan
- Age: 16
- Sport: Athletics
Jordan is the youngest member of Australia's athletics team and will run in the men's 100m T47 (which he can do in under 12 seconds). Born with a congenital arm abnormality, Anthony told Athletics Australia he hopes to study health science or commerce after finishing school and that one of his biggest challenges is balancing his VCE studies with athletics:
Helen Boardman
- Age: 60
- Sport: Lawn bowls
Another Commonwealth Games debutant, Boardman will compete in the B2-B3 mixed pairs alongside Jake Fehlberg, who won gold at the 2018 Gold Coast Games. Fehlberg narrowly beat Boardman at the Queensland Multi-Disability Championships last year, but she claimed gold in the vision-impaired pairs at the 2022 Australian Open.
The 2022 Commonwealth Games are on from July 28 in Birmingham.
