Renée Edgar, an optometrist with Wellington’s McClellan Grimmer Edgar, is New Zealand’s first certified international qualifier of visually impaired athletes for the Paralympics.
A recipient of the Prime Minister’s Scholarship through High Performance Sport New Zealand, Edgar trained in Malawi in November 2022 and is now certified to classify vision-impaired athletes at international events.
Marguerite Christophers, classification manager with Paralympics New Zealand (PNZ), said Edgar’s certification has a significant impact on para sport in New Zealand. “It will ensure all national classifications conducted by Renée in New Zealand are gold standard. It also means she will be abreast of current methodology, international trends, research and classification developments. Renée’s skills, knowledge and professionalism contribute greatly to the New Zealand para sport programme across multiple sports.”
Driven by a passion for sports vision and a desire to give back to the community, Edgar found her niche in the Paralympics movement. “Being a classifier for visually impaired athletes felt like a really nice fit for me and offered an opportunity to give back to a group we generally can’t do much to help,” she said.
Edgar said her training was much more in-depth than the national classifier course, consisting of three days of theory followed by practical work classifying athletes. Although her six-day visit to Malawi didn’t allow for much sightseeing, the experience was incredibly rewarding, she said. “It’s phenomenal to see how the athletes cope with such massive impairments. I love to hear the stories behind their achievements. I’d like to think we can do better in New Zealand, to help identify talent in the vision-impairment population, offering them something to work towards.”
