Priya Cooper
Encyclopedia
Priya Cooper is a world champion disabled swimmer, winning nine Paralympic
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She competed in the Australian 1992
, 1996
and 2000
Summer Paralympics swimming team with an S8 classification
. She was twice the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team, including at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, and carried the Australian flag at the closing ceremonies for the 1992 and 1996 Summer Paralympics. Cooper has cerebral palsy
and spends much of her time in a wheelchair. She attended university, working on a course in health management. After she ended her competitive Paralympic career, she became a commentator, and covered the swimming events at the 2002 Commonwealth Games
.
. She was born with cerebral palsy,
Priya Cooper (born 2 October 1974) is a world champion disabled swimmer, winning nine Paralympic
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She competed in the Australian 1992
, 1996
and 2000
Summer Paralympics swimming team with an S8 classification
. She was twice the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team, including at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, and carried the Australian flag at the closing ceremonies for the 1992 and 1996 Summer Paralympics. Cooper has cerebral palsy
and spends much of her time in a wheelchair. She attended university, working on a course in health management. After she ended her competitive Paralympic career, she became a commentator, and covered the swimming events at the 2002 Commonwealth Games
.
p.24 in Perth, Western Australia
. She was born with cerebral palsy,
Priya Cooper (born 2 October 1974) is a world champion disabled swimmer, winning nine Paralympic
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She competed in the Australian 1992
, 1996
and 2000
Summer Paralympics swimming team with an S8 classification
. She was twice the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team, including at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, and carried the Australian flag at the closing ceremonies for the 1992 and 1996 Summer Paralympics. Cooper has cerebral palsy
and spends much of her time in a wheelchair. She attended university, working on a course in health management. After she ended her competitive Paralympic career, she became a commentator, and covered the swimming events at the 2002 Commonwealth Games
.
p.24 in Perth, Western Australia
. She was born with cerebral palsy, and spends 75% of her time in a wheelchair. As a youngster, her mother encouraged her to try out several sports, including tap dancing and ballet.
With her father's encouragement, Cooper first started swimming in her backyard pool when she was six years old. Her first swimsuit was a bikini. Her father taught her to swim while making her wear big yellow floaties. She started competitive swimming at school carnivals. In the first one she competed in, she finished sixth in the F-division 50 m butterfly. She was informed about disabled athletes by a teacher at school. Her initial reaction to learning about disabled sport was to question if she was "disabled enough" to compete. She made her first national team appearance when she was in year 12 in school, after winning twelve gold medals in national swimming meets. By that time, Cooper had already begun serious training, waking up at 4am to get pool time.
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She represented Wheelchair Sports Western Australia at the 1991 National Wheelchair Games, winning nine gold medals. Her home pool was the Swan Park Leisure Centre in Midvale, Western Australia
. She had a number of coaches over the course of her competitive career, including Matthew Brown and Frank Ponta
.
Cooper made Paralympic debut at the 1992 Summer Paralympics
in Barcelona, at the age of 17. She was in danger of not going to the 1992 Paralympics because of funding issues for the Australian Paralympic Federation
. The Federation made an emergency appeal for funding from the public in order to cover the cost of transporting the Australian team to Barcelona. A variety of small donations allowed Cooper and other Australian athletes to compete. She won three Gold and two Silver medals, and broke two World records and three Paralympic records.
She was a co-captain of the Australian team at the 1996 Summer Paralympics
, where she competed in six individual events and two relay events in the S8 class, winning five gold medals, four individual and one team, and one silver and one bronze medal. She set several world records at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta in the 200 m medley and the 400 m freestyle swimming events. She also set personal bests in the 100 m backstroke and 100 m freestyle. Her world record time in the 400 m freestyle was 5:11.47, her 100 m backstroke time was 1:23.43, and her 100 m freestyle time was 1:12.08.
In 1998, Cooper competed at the Paralympic Swimming World Championships in Christchurch
, New Zealand. She set a world record in the 400 m freestyle at the event. She set another world record in the S8 classification, with a time of 10:40.03, three seconds faster than the previous record. She also won a gold medal in the 200 m individual medley, with a finish that was half a second away from beating her own previous world record.
Cooper competed in the Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association
-sponsored 1998 Queensland Championships in five swimming events. She and Brad Thomas
were invited to attend as special guest competitors. While attending, Cooper also hosted a coaching clinic with Thomas.
In 1999, Cooper moved to Sydney, the location of the 2000 Summer Paralympics
, to prepare for the games. She had been living there for eighteen months at the time of those games. Her family continued to live in Perth and the move was an adjustment period for her. She helped to make several instructional videos for Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) to help train volunteers for the games. In preparation for the 2000 Paralympics, the Australian Paralympic Committee created a CD to help with fundraising. She participated in this by choosing the song "Ashes" by The Superjesus
and singing it onstage during the CD's launch.
At the 2000 Summer Paralympics, her last games, she was the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team. Coming into the 2000 Games, there were some concerns that she would not be able to compete because of a shoulder injury. She was worried about how receptive Australians and the world would be in terms of disabled sport prior to the Paralympics being hosted in Australia. She was surprised when the Paralympic Games started at how supportive Australians and international visitors were of athletes at the 2000 Paralympic Games. She won the 400 m freestyle and took three bronze medals in the 100 m freestyle, 4 x 100 m freestyle relay and 4 x 100 m medley relay events. After the Games, Cooper believed that they had a long reaching societal impact in terms of creating a better image for disabled people around the country and helping to increase acceptance of them as part of Australian society. She also believed that the Games would help increase spectatorship for Paralympic sports around the country.
Cooper's swimming style relied on upper body strength, with her legs trailing behind her. Despite her love of water, Cooper had a fear of swimming in the open water of the ocean. To help overcome this fear, she competed in the 2002 open water 20 kilometres (12.4 mi) Rottnest Channel Swim
in Western Australia.
Prior to the 2008 Summer Paralympics
, Cooper was Australia's leading Paralympic swimming medallist, winning nine gold medals between 1994 and 2004, but her record was surpassed at the 2008 games by Siobhan Paton
.
. In 1998, Cooper won a Dairy Farmers Sporting Chance award in swimming. That year, she also won a Curtin University of Technology John Curtin Medal. In 1999, she won the APC Merit Award.
Cooper was chosen to officially open the Perth Hockey Stadium
at Curtin University in 2009.
She is well known and popular in Australia. She attended the tenth anniversary celebrations for the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games held at Sydney Olympic Park
in 2010.
At the age of 27 Cooper became a commentator for the 2002 Commonwealth Games
, covering the swimming events. She is a Therapy Focus Ambassador, and a member of the Disabilities and Carer Council. She is actively involved in raising funds for several charities, and was part of the Great Pram Push event held in East Fremantle, Western Australia
, a charity event that raised funds for the Starlight Children's Foundation and the Children's Leukaemia and Cancer Research Foundation.
Cooper is married to Paralymic swimmer Rodney Bonsack and has two children.
Paralympic Games
The Paralympic Games are a major international multi-sport event where athletes with a physical disability compete; this includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and Cerebral Palsy. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which are held immediately following their...
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She competed in the Australian 1992
1992 Summer Paralympics
The 1992 Summer Paralympics were the ninth Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.- Sports :The games consisted of 487 events spread over fifteen sports. Powerlifting and weightlifting were considered to be a single sport...
, 1996
1996 Summer Paralympics
The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, USA were held from 16 August to 25 August. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million....
and 2000
2000 Summer Paralympics
The 2000 Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, from 18 October to 29 October. The eleventh Summer Paralympic Games, an estimated 3800 athletes took part in the Sydney programme. They commenced with the opening ceremony on 18 October 2000...
Summer Paralympics swimming team with an S8 classification
S8 (classification)
S8, SB7, SM8 are disability swimming classifications used for categorising swimmers based on their level of disability.-History:The classification was created by the International Paralympic Committee and has roots in a 2003 attempt to address "the overall objective to support and co-ordinate the...
. She was twice the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team, including at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, and carried the Australian flag at the closing ceremonies for the 1992 and 1996 Summer Paralympics. Cooper has cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive, non-contagious motor conditions that cause physical disability in human development, chiefly in the various areas of body movement....
and spends much of her time in a wheelchair. She attended university, working on a course in health management. After she ended her competitive Paralympic career, she became a commentator, and covered the swimming events at the 2002 Commonwealth Games
2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games were held in Manchester, England from 25 July to 4 August 2002. The XVII Commonwealth Games was the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in the UK, eclipsing London's 1948 Summer Olympics in numbers of teams and athletes participating.After the 1996 Manchester...
.
Early life
Priya Cooper was born on 2 October 1974 in Perth, Western AustraliaPerth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
. She was born with cerebral palsy,
Priya Cooper (born 2 October 1974) is a world champion disabled swimmer, winning nine Paralympic
Paralympic Games
The Paralympic Games are a major international multi-sport event where athletes with a physical disability compete; this includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and Cerebral Palsy. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which are held immediately following their...
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She competed in the Australian 1992
1992 Summer Paralympics
The 1992 Summer Paralympics were the ninth Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.- Sports :The games consisted of 487 events spread over fifteen sports. Powerlifting and weightlifting were considered to be a single sport...
, 1996
1996 Summer Paralympics
The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, USA were held from 16 August to 25 August. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million....
and 2000
2000 Summer Paralympics
The 2000 Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, from 18 October to 29 October. The eleventh Summer Paralympic Games, an estimated 3800 athletes took part in the Sydney programme. They commenced with the opening ceremony on 18 October 2000...
Summer Paralympics swimming team with an S8 classification
S8 (classification)
S8, SB7, SM8 are disability swimming classifications used for categorising swimmers based on their level of disability.-History:The classification was created by the International Paralympic Committee and has roots in a 2003 attempt to address "the overall objective to support and co-ordinate the...
. She was twice the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team, including at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, and carried the Australian flag at the closing ceremonies for the 1992 and 1996 Summer Paralympics. Cooper has cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive, non-contagious motor conditions that cause physical disability in human development, chiefly in the various areas of body movement....
and spends much of her time in a wheelchair. She attended university, working on a course in health management. After she ended her competitive Paralympic career, she became a commentator, and covered the swimming events at the 2002 Commonwealth Games
2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games were held in Manchester, England from 25 July to 4 August 2002. The XVII Commonwealth Games was the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in the UK, eclipsing London's 1948 Summer Olympics in numbers of teams and athletes participating.After the 1996 Manchester...
.
Early life
Priya Cooper was born on 2 October 1974W.A. Hall of Champions inductee booklet. (2006) Published by the Western Australian Institute of SportWestern Australian Institute of Sport
The Western Australian Institute of Sport is an elite sports institute set up in 1983 by the Government of Western Australia to support athletes in Western Australia...
p.24 in Perth, Western Australia
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
. She was born with cerebral palsy,
Priya Cooper (born 2 October 1974) is a world champion disabled swimmer, winning nine Paralympic
Paralympic Games
The Paralympic Games are a major international multi-sport event where athletes with a physical disability compete; this includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and Cerebral Palsy. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which are held immediately following their...
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She competed in the Australian 1992
1992 Summer Paralympics
The 1992 Summer Paralympics were the ninth Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.- Sports :The games consisted of 487 events spread over fifteen sports. Powerlifting and weightlifting were considered to be a single sport...
, 1996
1996 Summer Paralympics
The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, USA were held from 16 August to 25 August. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million....
and 2000
2000 Summer Paralympics
The 2000 Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, from 18 October to 29 October. The eleventh Summer Paralympic Games, an estimated 3800 athletes took part in the Sydney programme. They commenced with the opening ceremony on 18 October 2000...
Summer Paralympics swimming team with an S8 classification
S8 (classification)
S8, SB7, SM8 are disability swimming classifications used for categorising swimmers based on their level of disability.-History:The classification was created by the International Paralympic Committee and has roots in a 2003 attempt to address "the overall objective to support and co-ordinate the...
. She was twice the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team, including at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, and carried the Australian flag at the closing ceremonies for the 1992 and 1996 Summer Paralympics. Cooper has cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive, non-contagious motor conditions that cause physical disability in human development, chiefly in the various areas of body movement....
and spends much of her time in a wheelchair. She attended university, working on a course in health management. After she ended her competitive Paralympic career, she became a commentator, and covered the swimming events at the 2002 Commonwealth Games
2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games were held in Manchester, England from 25 July to 4 August 2002. The XVII Commonwealth Games was the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in the UK, eclipsing London's 1948 Summer Olympics in numbers of teams and athletes participating.After the 1996 Manchester...
.
Early life
Priya Cooper was born on 2 October 1974W.A. Hall of Champions inductee booklet. (2006) Published by the Western Australian Institute of SportWestern Australian Institute of Sport
The Western Australian Institute of Sport is an elite sports institute set up in 1983 by the Government of Western Australia to support athletes in Western Australia...
p.24 in Perth, Western Australia
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
. She was born with cerebral palsy, and spends 75% of her time in a wheelchair. As a youngster, her mother encouraged her to try out several sports, including tap dancing and ballet.
With her father's encouragement, Cooper first started swimming in her backyard pool when she was six years old. Her first swimsuit was a bikini. Her father taught her to swim while making her wear big yellow floaties. She started competitive swimming at school carnivals. In the first one she competed in, she finished sixth in the F-division 50 m butterfly. She was informed about disabled athletes by a teacher at school. Her initial reaction to learning about disabled sport was to question if she was "disabled enough" to compete. She made her first national team appearance when she was in year 12 in school, after winning twelve gold medals in national swimming meets. By that time, Cooper had already begun serious training, waking up at 4am to get pool time.
Competitive athletic career
Cooper is a world champion disabled swimmer, winning nine ParalympicParalympic Games
The Paralympic Games are a major international multi-sport event where athletes with a physical disability compete; this includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and Cerebral Palsy. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which are held immediately following their...
gold medals as well as world records and world championships. She represented Wheelchair Sports Western Australia at the 1991 National Wheelchair Games, winning nine gold medals. Her home pool was the Swan Park Leisure Centre in Midvale, Western Australia
Midvale, Western Australia
Midvale is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located mostly within the City of Swan, and partly within the Shire of Mundaring. Its postcode is 6056....
. She had a number of coaches over the course of her competitive career, including Matthew Brown and Frank Ponta
Frank Ponta
Ponta coached several medal winning Paralympic athletes including Louise Sauvage and Priya Cooper. He was Sauvage's first coach, starting when Sauvage was a junior competitor. Sauvage described Ponta's coaching style as patient....
.
Cooper made Paralympic debut at the 1992 Summer Paralympics
1992 Summer Paralympics
The 1992 Summer Paralympics were the ninth Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.- Sports :The games consisted of 487 events spread over fifteen sports. Powerlifting and weightlifting were considered to be a single sport...
in Barcelona, at the age of 17. She was in danger of not going to the 1992 Paralympics because of funding issues for the Australian Paralympic Federation
Australian Paralympic Committee
The Australian Paralympic Committee is the National Paralympic Committee in Australia for the Paralympic Games movement. It oversees the means by which Australia participates at the Summer Paralympics and the Winter Paralympics.-History:...
. The Federation made an emergency appeal for funding from the public in order to cover the cost of transporting the Australian team to Barcelona. A variety of small donations allowed Cooper and other Australian athletes to compete. She won three Gold and two Silver medals, and broke two World records and three Paralympic records.
She was a co-captain of the Australian team at the 1996 Summer Paralympics
1996 Summer Paralympics
The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, USA were held from 16 August to 25 August. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million....
, where she competed in six individual events and two relay events in the S8 class, winning five gold medals, four individual and one team, and one silver and one bronze medal. She set several world records at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta in the 200 m medley and the 400 m freestyle swimming events. She also set personal bests in the 100 m backstroke and 100 m freestyle. Her world record time in the 400 m freestyle was 5:11.47, her 100 m backstroke time was 1:23.43, and her 100 m freestyle time was 1:12.08.
In 1998, Cooper competed at the Paralympic Swimming World Championships in Christchurch
Christchurch
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...
, New Zealand. She set a world record in the 400 m freestyle at the event. She set another world record in the S8 classification, with a time of 10:40.03, three seconds faster than the previous record. She also won a gold medal in the 200 m individual medley, with a finish that was half a second away from beating her own previous world record.
Cooper competed in the Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association
Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association
Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association is the peak body for sport, recreation and fitness for people with a physical disability or vision impairment in Queensland, Australia....
-sponsored 1998 Queensland Championships in five swimming events. She and Brad Thomas
Brad Thomas
Bradley Richard Thomas is an Australian professional baseball pitcher that is currently a free agent. He has previously played in MLB for the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers, in Nippon Professional Baseball for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters and in the Korean Baseball Organization for the...
were invited to attend as special guest competitors. While attending, Cooper also hosted a coaching clinic with Thomas.
In 1999, Cooper moved to Sydney, the location of the 2000 Summer Paralympics
2000 Summer Paralympics
The 2000 Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, from 18 October to 29 October. The eleventh Summer Paralympic Games, an estimated 3800 athletes took part in the Sydney programme. They commenced with the opening ceremony on 18 October 2000...
, to prepare for the games. She had been living there for eighteen months at the time of those games. Her family continued to live in Perth and the move was an adjustment period for her. She helped to make several instructional videos for Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) to help train volunteers for the games. In preparation for the 2000 Paralympics, the Australian Paralympic Committee created a CD to help with fundraising. She participated in this by choosing the song "Ashes" by The Superjesus
The Superjesus
The Superjesus were an ARIA award–winning rock band from Adelaide, Australia. They are best known for their singles "Shut My Eyes", "Down Again" and "Gravity".-History:...
and singing it onstage during the CD's launch.
At the 2000 Summer Paralympics, her last games, she was the co-captain of the Australian Paralympic team. Coming into the 2000 Games, there were some concerns that she would not be able to compete because of a shoulder injury. She was worried about how receptive Australians and the world would be in terms of disabled sport prior to the Paralympics being hosted in Australia. She was surprised when the Paralympic Games started at how supportive Australians and international visitors were of athletes at the 2000 Paralympic Games. She won the 400 m freestyle and took three bronze medals in the 100 m freestyle, 4 x 100 m freestyle relay and 4 x 100 m medley relay events. After the Games, Cooper believed that they had a long reaching societal impact in terms of creating a better image for disabled people around the country and helping to increase acceptance of them as part of Australian society. She also believed that the Games would help increase spectatorship for Paralympic sports around the country.
Cooper's swimming style relied on upper body strength, with her legs trailing behind her. Despite her love of water, Cooper had a fear of swimming in the open water of the ocean. To help overcome this fear, she competed in the 2002 open water 20 kilometres (12.4 mi) Rottnest Channel Swim
Rottnest Channel Swim
The Rottnest Channel Swim is an annual open water swimming event from Cottesloe Beach to Rottnest Island, off the coast of Western Australia, near Perth. It is open to solo swimmers and teams of two or four. It is one of the largest open water swimming events in the world. The distance is...
in Western Australia.
Prior to the 2008 Summer Paralympics
2008 Summer Paralympics
The 2008 Summer Paralympic Games, the thirteenth Paralympics, took place in Beijing, China from September 6 to September 17, 2008. As with the 2008 Summer Olympics, equestrian events were held in Hong Kong and sailing events in Qingdao....
, Cooper was Australia's leading Paralympic swimming medallist, winning nine gold medals between 1994 and 2004, but her record was surpassed at the 2008 games by Siobhan Paton
Siobhan Paton
Siôbhán Paton OAM, born 28 August 1983, is an Australian Paralympic swimmer. As of 2004, she holds thirteen world records in her disability class of S14 - intellectual disability....
.
Recognition
Cooper was selected to carry the Australian flag at the closing ceremonies for the 1992 Summer Paralympics and the 1996 Summer Paralympics. She was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 1993, was named the 1995 Paralympian of the Year, was the Young Australian of the Year for Sport in 1999, and was inducted into the Western Australian Hall of ChampionsWestern Australian Hall of Champions
In 1983, the Sportswriters' Association of Western Australia proposed a Western Australian Hall of Champions to honour past athletes from the state who had made a significant impact in their sport...
. In 1998, Cooper won a Dairy Farmers Sporting Chance award in swimming. That year, she also won a Curtin University of Technology John Curtin Medal. In 1999, she won the APC Merit Award.
Cooper was chosen to officially open the Perth Hockey Stadium
Perth Hockey Stadium
Perth Hockey Stadium is a field hockey stadium in Perth, Australia. It hosted matches for the 1985 Champions Trophy and also the 2002 Women's Hockey World Cup. The stadium is located at Curtin University and holds 6,000 people. Starting in Late 2009 Perth Hockey Stadium replaced the turf with...
at Curtin University in 2009.
She is well known and popular in Australia. She attended the tenth anniversary celebrations for the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games held at Sydney Olympic Park
Sydney Olympic Park
Sydney Olympic Park is a suburb in western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Sydney Olympic Park is located 16 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Auburn Council....
in 2010.
Personal life
Cooper studied at Curtin University, where she graduated with a degree in health promotion and media. She was also a public speaker, attending events to talk about disabilities. Cooper had a volunteer position, where she worked as a scriptwriter for a radio station in Perth.At the age of 27 Cooper became a commentator for the 2002 Commonwealth Games
2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games were held in Manchester, England from 25 July to 4 August 2002. The XVII Commonwealth Games was the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in the UK, eclipsing London's 1948 Summer Olympics in numbers of teams and athletes participating.After the 1996 Manchester...
, covering the swimming events. She is a Therapy Focus Ambassador, and a member of the Disabilities and Carer Council. She is actively involved in raising funds for several charities, and was part of the Great Pram Push event held in East Fremantle, Western Australia
East Fremantle, Western Australia
The Town of East Fremantle is a Local Government Area in the southern suburbs of the Western Australian capital city of Perth, located immediately northeast of the port city of Fremantle and about southwest of Perth's central business district...
, a charity event that raised funds for the Starlight Children's Foundation and the Children's Leukaemia and Cancer Research Foundation.
Cooper is married to Paralymic swimmer Rodney Bonsack and has two children.
External links
- Cooper, Priya (1974 – ), The Australian Women's Register