Para-sports veteran Kurt Fearnley will carry the Australian flag at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony for a country he considers an expansion of his family.
Chef de mission Steve Moneghetti announced Fearnley's appointment as flagbearer on Sunday, hours after the 37-year-old athletics team co-captain raced to gold in the men's wheelchair marathon.
"I'm always a para athlete, tonight I'm a Commonwealth Games athlete," Fearnley said.
"As a kid, I couldn't have imagined seeing a guy in a wheelchair or a girl in a wheelchair carrying the flag at the closing ceremony.
"I couldn't have imagined the way I'd wake up tomorrow and go to school and the idea of pride ... and that's where it links back into.
"There would be a lot of kids in chairs going to school tomorrow and I'm sure there are a few people where it will mean a lot."
Fearnley welled up as he reflected on his journey, thanking his family and the 200 farmers who bought him his first wheelchair as a child growing up in the NSW regional town of Carcoar.
"You barely leave that little town and that's your world, that's your country," he said.
"Then you start to go to school and ... you just stretch your family out to be this last week, where every metre that I was able to go through the Gold Coast, people were stopping, hugging me.
"My country are the people that have just given and given. I've just been able to build this racing career because of their generosity."
The closing ceremony will be held within Carrara Stadium, where Fearnley won silver in the men's T54 1500m.
"It's just been an unbelievable week," he said.
"The race this morning, I feel like I've lost fluid but from crying."
Moneghetti was equally emotional about the day and the overall performance of the Australians at the Games.
"I think you saw this morning, the determination and the support he (Fearnley) had out on the road," he said.
"He's obviously shown that throughout his whole life, through adversity, through thick and thin, through his activities. He's such a humble person ... just an amazing bloke."
Australian Associated Press
