RYLEY BATT has become the star of the Paralympic Games. American TV crews came to blows trying to get near him after the 19-year-old put Australia into the medal round of the demolition derby that is wheelchair rugby.
He is an outstanding, humble young man from Port Macquarie who is forever trying to deflect praise onto his teammates. But when you start dominating like Batt in Beijing, good luck trying to have the spotlight directed towards anyone else.
There were 5.9 seconds left on the clock against the defending Paralympic champions, New Zealand, in a bruising game that had all the blood and thunder of a Bledisloe Cup encounter. A win would ensure Australia made the semi-finals. Two seconds to go, and the score was locked at 38-38. The noise was deafening.
Batt had the ball. He saw a gap out of the corner of his eye. One second left and he was flying into it, one wheel in the air. Full-time, and he had scored the match-winner to end them all with two-hundredths of a second to spare. "Whoa," he said. "That felt good."
Bedlam. Australia's players have put their heart and soul into this campaign, training like professional athletes while being paid a pittance, most of them juggling their sporting commitments with full-time jobs and the extreme day-to-day difficulties of quadriplegia.
They bombed out at the Athens Games, finishing fifth, and the whole set-up was in disarray. But new coach Brad Dubberley has them going like a freight train. Dubberley was the sport's foremost player but became coach two years ago. His impact has been profound.
Batt, born without legs and with disfigured hands, spent the first 11 years of his life getting around Port Macquarie on a skateboard because that's what his able-bodied mates were doing. His hands were his brakes. His mother, Christine, wanted him off the skateboard before he started high school.
Dubberley visited Batt's school to give a demonstration of wheelchair rugby. Batt gave it a go, and appreciated the bruising physical confrontations. That first meeting with Dubberley was the first time Batt had agreed to sit in a wheelchair.
"I knew Ryley was going to get there," Dubberley said of Batt's matchwinner. "One second to go, he had two people to beat. I just knew he'd get there. The kid stepped up."
Today, Batt and Dubberley lead Australia into another brutal clash against one of the big dogs of the sport, either the United States or Canada, for a place in the final. Surviving the preliminary rounds, and eliminating the Kiwis, is a major accomplishment in itself. Batt was exhausted in the later stages, his arms like dead weights, but he refused to be replaced and sealed the deal in the most spectacular possible fashion.
"I'm just so glad to be a part of this Australian team," Batt said. "It was a scrappy game, pretty heavy defence from both sides, but we got there.
"I was hurting that much, I didn't think I'd be able to finish that last quarter. But you just have to start playing with your heart. The whole team backed me up, it's so good to play with these blokes. We were so motivated to get through and, lucky for us, we got that last goal.
"The Kiwis had a bit of a stuff-up at the end, but we were putting a lot of pressure on them. We got the ball back and I thought, 'Here we go, we're a chance here to take them down.' Any day we beat the Kiwis, we'll take it."
The US are the rock stars of the sport, courtesy of the Oscar-nominated documentary Murderball, shot before and during the 2004 Athens Paralympics. The star of that show, Mark "Zuperman" Zupan, has since become a celebrity in the States. He is in Beijing, still the heart and soul of the US team.
The movie revolves around the seething rivalry between the US and Canadian teams and now Batt, Dubberley and the rest of the Australians are stepping straight into the middle of it.
"I said it from the get go - we're a chance," Dubberley said.
Dubberley and Batt have come a long way together. After the Kiwi game, when all the interviews had finally finished and the buzz around the stadium was just starting to fade, the duo walked along a darkened corridor back to the change room at the University of Science and Technology Gymnasium.
For once in their lives, the two close mates weren't talking at a million miles an hour. Dubberley put his left hand on Batt's right shoulder.
"Mate," Dubberley said.
Batt, still in his wheelchair, looked up at him.
"Yep?" he asked.
"Mate," Dubberley said again. "Well done."
