The bubbly 27-year-old, who has been confined to a wheelchair since she was a young girl, dabbled in soccer, basketball and tennis before uncovering her untapped potential as a wheelchair athlete.

"I had two sisters so I grew up playing whatever sport they were playing, they were both good soccer players so I was just like the worst goalkeeper," de Rozario says with her trademark grin.

"I tried basketball and tennis and I was horrific because I'm not coordinated and I have zero ball skills.

"[My old coach] pulled me aside and he was like you're absolutely terrible at this sport. I tried it [wheelchair racing] in a parking lot, the chair was too big, packed with foam, but I loved it.

"It was so individual, you kind of got out of it what you put into it. I was terrible at it to begin with, but I loved it from there."

December 3 is International Day of people with a disability - a major date for the AIS and its celebrated athletics, swimming and rowing Paralympic programs.

A total of 24 Para athletes train at the Institute.

Like 22-year-old Sarah Walsh, whose right leg was amputated when she was just 18 months old. She now runs with a prosthetic blade.

Two-time Paralympian Jake Lappin suffers from caudal regression syndrome which affects his lower spine. In 2017 he broke Kurt Fearnley's long-standing 800m Australian record.

Cameron Crombie who suffers from cerebral palsy, began his para-athletic career as a rower, but quickly switched throwing events which he immediately dominated.

He has a Commonwealth Games gold medal, and two from the World Championships - all in shot put.

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Star swimmer Matt Levy has known nothing but living with a disability. He was born 15 weeks premature with cerebral palsy, and suffered a bleed on the brain when he was just days old which rendered him legally blind.

He can see about two metres in front of him, then everything goes dark. He also has no peripheral vision.

"Depth perception is a big thing for swimming and I'm not that great for depth perception, it's about feeling where my body is and understanding where my body is in space," Levy says.

"Having cerebral palsy and having a neurological condition adds to that non understanding of where things are. It's a lifetime understanding of learning how and what my body can do.

"A good thing about a vision impairment is you can't see competitors so it's really great to focus on what you're doing and focusing on how you're doing.

"It also means you don't know if you're first, second, third or fifth."