THERE’S A TOUCH of Clark Kent about Tristan Knowles. When Men’s Health manages to catch up with the soon-to-be six-time Paralympian, it’s during a break from his unassuming day job as a financial advice manager at AIA Australia. He might not carry the gravitas of a basketball player like our recent cover star, Patty Mills, or be as instantly recognisable as someone like Ben Simmons, but he’s been no less influential in his sport. And like Superman, once he pulls on the suit – or more accurately, the Rollers’ green and gold jersey – he’s an unstoppable force.
Knowles is Australia’s joint-most decorated wheelchair basketballer of all time, with three Paralympic medals – one of them gold – and two world championship victories to his name. During his tenure with the team, the Rollers have gone from an outfit of perennial nearly-men who had only medalled once in Paralympic history to a formidable unit that’s always contending for top honours and is recognised as one of the best teams in the world.
At 41, Knowles has been a consistent member of the national squad for more than 20 years, but he’s been hesitant to consider retirement in the past. “I love competing, but honestly, if I had quit sometime over the last few years, I couldn’t have said that I was leaving the team in a better condition than when I joined,” he tells Men’s Health. That’s not the case anymore.
Heading into Paris, Knowles believes the Rollers are a strong chance of claiming their first Paralympic medal in 12 years. “I haven’t been this confident in the team winning a gold medal in a long time. I truly believe that our strategy and blueprint can take us all the way to gold.”
Knowles is confident, without being cocky – and don’t mistake his faith in his team with arrogance. Like many in his sport, Knowles has experienced highs and lows. He’s won gold medal games, but he’s also lost them. Although, his experience with both sides of the coin isn’t isolated to the court. Knowles’ life has been a battle of highs and lows. It’s those experiences, he believes, that have honed his mindset into what it is today and given him what it takes to overcome adversity and be confident in the face of overwhelming odds.
INSTAGRAM | @tristanknowles09
“Growing up, I was a very active kid whose thoughts were consumed by a dream of captaining [AFL team] Hawthorn to a premiership, Aussie Rules was my passion,” says Knowles of his relationship with sport before his life was changed forever when he was nine years old. “One day, my left leg began to get sore just above the knee and at first, a GP put it down to a common growing pain. After a couple months it wasn’t getting any better, so I went and got an X-ray done.”
The next day, Knowles was informed that he had bone cancer in his left leg, and that the limb would need to be amputated above the knee, turning his life on its head. “It was a scary thing to go through at such a young age, and it ended up being something which challenged me for most of my teenage years,” Knowles says. “My immune system was virtually at zero for the first 12 months after, so I couldn’t even risk getting a cold. It meant a lot of time away from school, friends and playing any sort of sport.”
Knowles was on the road to recovery, enduring years of therapy and medical examinations before finally, during his last quarterly check-up, he was told that doctors had found cancer in his lungs. “It was terrifying because, from getting to know some of the other kids in my situation who had brain or lung cancer, I learned that those were the kids who usually didn’t make it,” he says. “I think that was probably the first time in my cancer journey that I allowed this really, really scary thought to enter my head that I wasn’t going to make it and that I might die at 11 years old.”
This was a turning point in Knowles’ life. Obviously, a cancer diagnosis is always life-changing, but it was in these moments that Knowles’ mindset was built, thanks to a little white lie. “I asked the doctor what my chances of surviving were and he said ‘50-50’. Later, my parents revealed to me that my actual chances of survival were around 5 per cent,” he says. “That had a profound impact on me. It showed me the importance of mindset when approaching a situation of adversity and it helped me maintain hope in a difficult time.”
After beating cancer, Knowles began another battle: getting back into sport. “I had a strange feeling after beating cancer the second time that the battle still wasn’t won,” he recalls. “I still had those dreams of being an AFL player, but obviously that had all been turned on its head. It left me with a feeling of emptiness.”
Knowles spent the next few years searching for the sport that was right for him, which was no easy task. “I’d tried what felt like every other sport under the sun and I just couldn’t find anything that I liked,” he says. Eventually, he discovered wheelchair basketball and from there, he never looked back. “I didn’t cross paths with wheelchair basketball until I was about 15, but I loved it straight away. It has a lot of similar elements to Aussie Rules, it’s fast, physical and it’s a team sport. I very quickly fell in love with the sport and started to form some pretty big goals around what I wanted to achieve.”
Those goals that Knowles speaks of didn’t take long to manifest into a plan of action. He became “obsessed with making the national team” and at 18 years of age, moved to Wollongong from Canberra to join and train with a wheelchair basketball team. At that time, Knowles was studying at university, training whenever he could and saving his particularly tough sessions for the weekend. It didn’t take long for his hard work to pay off.
Knowles received his first call up to the national team when he was only 18. A few short years later, he was heading off to his first Paralympics in Athens. There, Australia improved upon its previous campaign where the team finished fifth, but fell painfully short of ultimate victory, falling to Canada in the decisive gold medal game.
That defeat stuck with Knowles. “I feel like every athlete says this, but we didn’t feel like we won silver, we felt like we lost gold.” The near miss brought about a reckoning, a thorough questioning of the Rollers’ strengths and weaknesses where each member of the squad contemplated what they could do to improve and how they could finish atop the podium at the next Paralympics. “We made a commitment to each other to come back stronger,” Knowles says.
INSTAGRAM | @tristanknowles09
Four years later, the Rollers went into the 2008 Beijing Paralympics with a single goal in mind: win a gold medal. After progressing through a five-game group stage and two knockout games, the Rollers were presented with a familiar foe in the gold-medal match. The same Canadian team that crushed their dreams four years earlier now stood in their way once again.
At the time, Canada was inarguably considered the best wheelchair basketball team in the world. Since winning gold at the previous Paralympics, the Canadians had also won the 2006 world championships and had only dropped three games in the entire Paralympic cycle. Unfazed by their formidable opponents, the Australians emerged victorious, winning only the team’s second Paralympic gold medal in the event. “It’s hard to put into words the sensation and feeling of winning a gold medal,” Knowles says. “It was the payoff for years of hard work and sacrifices.”
The Rollers backed up their Paralympic victory with wins at the 2010 and 2014 world championships, establishing themselves as the team to beat in international competition. Though on the Paralympic stage, success was harder to come by. Silver was all they could muster at the 2012 Games, despite entering the tournament as favourites. At Rio 2016, the Rollers were knocked out in the quarterfinals and faced the same result at Tokyo 2020.
Despite the recent disappointments, Knowles is confident that the Rollers can end their medal drought in Paris, with him now serving as the team’s captain. And at this point, he knows what to expect. “By the time you go to your sixth games, you kind of know how a lot of things are going to go. But that hunger for success never goes away,” Knowles says. “It’s been 10 years since the Rollers have been in the final of a major event, and that’s a hell of a long time to go between drinks. We’ve got a real chance of winning gold in Paris.”
Expect Knowles to give it all at the Games, but whether or not the Rollers win gold or crash out early, he won’t let it define his career. “As an athlete, you’re taught this mentality of all or nothing. I think that can be helpful sometimes, but it’s not always the right mentality,” he says. “What I’ve learned as time’s gone by, and particularly through being an AIA vitality ambassador, is that for most people it’s more about those small somethings. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about doing little things consistently for a long period of time.”
This is what Knowles calls the “all or something” mindset. It’s helping him ground himself in reality heading into the Paralympics, but he also believes it can benefit everyday Australians. “On a more basic level, it might mean getting a set amount of work done each day of the week, or drinking more water or getting eight hours of sleep a night. If we can look after our own health and just do something, that’s all that really matters.”
“I’m really fortunate with the platform that I have as a Paralympian and within AIA to be someone who can advocate for people to look after their financial wellbeing too,” Knowles continues. “As an athlete, I’m acutely aware of how important it is to look after my physical and mental health, but in my role with AIA, I’ve come across some studies that have uncovered some pretty alarming stuff, like that someone experiencing financial stress is twice as likely to experience mental health challenges. So staying on top of your financial wellbeing can be just as important.”
Heading into Paris, Knowles hasn’t yet confirmed whether or not this Paralympics will be his last. He insists that he doesn’t want to leave until he’s certain that the national team is in a better position than what it was when he made his debut. Not that we’re encouraging an early retirement, but regardless of the outcome in Paris, we can say with confidence that Knowles has left an indelible mark on wheelchair basketball, and the Rollers are better for it.
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