Jul. 06, 2020

Meet Our First Brand Ambassador

Determination, inspiration, tenacity, resilience, perseverance... I could happily go on rolling adjectives off the tongue, when pausing to think about the incredible humans we cross paths with in our experiences with LusioMATE. Never are they more apt than when talking about a young lad we’ve had the distinct pleasure of knowing for a few years now. We first met Arran Keith at the CPA Habitile in 2017, and it is a real honour for us that he has agreed to be the first Lusio Rehab Brand Ambassador.

Now 11 years old in Year 5 at a local public school, he loves greyhounds, is super competitive and of course is supported all the way by his wonderful family, Mum Karen, Dad Richard and older sister Roxy. He tells us that he is really looking forward to ‘Getting Lusio face on’ to take on his big sis in some intra family rivalry. Roxy, a gold squad swimmer herself, also joins Mum and Dad for training sessions in the local park, and Arran says that he is really looking forward to bringing some of those sessions back indoors and involving them around Lusio.

Arran is a bright, enthusiastic and engaging example of what is possible. In a recent TV appearance on ABC’s The Drum, with his good friend Doug Kelly, Arran tells the interviewer how he was told by doctors at a young age that he would never walk, but now he walks on his own with no one behind him. ’I was pretty proud of that when I first did it’, he says, ‘but now it’s just usual’, he adds, with a grin that tells you much bigger achievements lie in wait for the kid from Rozelle NSW. He goes on to talk about his heroes Dylan Alcott and Kurt Fearnley, and you can see in Arran the same steely determination that took these two to the heights of their respective fields.

The interview is a masterclass in straight talking, and we love it!! It’s fantastic for us because amongst some of the things that he has undertaken to do for Lusio Rehab is review and test games, old and new as well as new platform features. We know full well, when Arran tells us that he will write down his thoughts in a Word Document, and send them through, that is exactly what we are going to get – his thoughts!! He will let us know the good, the bad and the ugly, which will be invaluable for us as we constantly work to make LusioMATE, and the Lusio games, the best possible versions of themselves that they can be, for the whole Lusio Family.

No write up of Arran Keith would be complete without talking about Racerunning, an innovative sport for disabled people with impaired balance, using a custom-built tricycle without pedals, on which balance is not an issue, pioneered in Denmark in 1991. Arran took to it the first time he tried it, back in 2016, and quickly assembled the Team Keith support team around him on his way to being the first athlete to represent Australia at the annual RR Camp and Cup in Fredriksberg, Denmark, in 2018. Walking away with 3 World Records, and a number of gold medals to boot, it’s fair to say that he loved the taste of success, and when you hear him say he will be a Paralympian one day, there is absolutely no reason to doubt him. Unfortunately Arran’s short term dream of returning to Denmark to defend titles was thwarted by Covid 19, but he hasn’t let this deter him from pursuing excellence in the sport that has become his passion.

A solid shout out to Team Keith is necessary at this point, as Arran would be the first to acknowledge that none of this past, nor future, success would be possible without it. By all accounts, Roxy, his 12 yr old sister, is his cheer squad champion and #1 fan, while mum Karen looks after the diet of the young Paralympian-in-waiting; honey soy salmon noodles is his favourite post training dish, he told us when we spoke to him before putting this story together. Dad Richard not only looks after Arran’s training and social media, but is also very much behind the growth of the sport in Australia and working tirelessly towards the ultimate goal of a place on the Paralympic stage. That work has seen the recent launch of the Racerunning Australia website and sport portal, another massive step in the growth of the sport. The mission is simple; to grow grassroots participation in the sport across Australia, through Athletics Australia’s events, so that Arran, and his peers, young and old, from kindy to high school, and on into adulthood, can get into a sport that enables them to enjoy themselves in the joy and human experience of running free under their own steam. The Paralympic stage, we are reliably informed, will happen by 2028 at the latest, and you can be assured that we will be right on top of these developments as they happen. We will also be keeping the Lusio Family up to date with the growth of the grassroots participation in general, and of course Arran’s progress in particular.

So look out over the coming weeks and months as we will see a lot more of Arran and the Keith family on our social media channels.

For further information on Racerunning Australia you can visit the recently launched website here. You can also follow Arran's social media on Facebook here and Instagram here.