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One sound and a diagnosis devastated Tara. Now, she’s hunting Glasgow gold
Tara Neyland remembers lying on a table at a neurologist’s clinic and hearing a ticking sound. Relentless ticking. She knew it spelt trouble. And she was bawling her eyes out.
“I was a mess,” Neyland, who’s eyeing off para-cycling gold on the Commonwealth Games velodrome this week, tells nine.com.au.
Champion para cyclist Tara Neyland cruising around the velodrome. Conan Shing/AusCycling.
The test she was undergoing was a nerve conduction study. It was 2023 and she was 29 years young.
Her body had started to turn on her about the age of 22. She remembers going for a run – just a regulation training run in her days as a triathlete – and feeling pain through her right leg. She was also limping.
An osteopath by trade, she had a look at her legs and noticed her right calf had become significantly smaller.
“The muscle bulk had wasted, even though I could still activate it,” Neyland recalls.
“That essentially happened overnight.”
She had an inkling something sinister was going on – in part because of her family history – but she didn’t want to believe it.
Two years passed. Her calf had not recovered. She was doing some upper-body work in the gym and feeling a little uncoordinated.
She captured video of herself on her phone, took a look at the vision, and noticed some of her upper-back muscles – part of her trapezius and one of her rhomboids – had also shrunk.
Still, she put off having testing done.
“I didn’t want to accept that something was wrong, and I didn’t want to be told I couldn’t do what I was doing in sport,” the Melburnian recalls.
“There was a lot of denial. I had my own internalised ableism. I didn’t want to be seen as different.”
Now’s a good time to note that Neyland doesn’t want sympathy. She speaks openly about a disability she was diagnosed with because there’s no shame in disability. She also wants to inspire anyone facing a similar struggle, and break down prejudices and non-truths surrounding para sport.
Eventually, after a seven-year wrestle with her deteriorating body, and more than half a decade after going for a run and sensing something wasn’t right, Neyland saw a doctor.
Tara Neyland in green and gold. Conan Shing/AusCycling.
A diagnosis was made.
A diagnosis that crushed her.
Muscular dystrophy.
“I remember that night was, yeah, pretty awful,” Neyland remembers.
Muscular dystrophy refers to a group of genetic diseases that cause muscles to waste. It is degenerative and it is incurable.
The disease is rife in Neyland’s family; her dad’s side specifically. Her grandfather, dad, uncle and brother all have it. Her uncle is in a wheelchair.
“Muscles don’t work the way they used to, but the human body is amazingly adaptable and finds ways to compensate,” Neyland says.
“I’m not in pain per se; I just have to find alternative ways to stabilise and complete movements.
“What’s quite scary is that you don’t know what muscle might atrophy next, and you don’t know how quickly or how slowly it will happen.
“I guess there’s an anxiety of what’s going to happen next, and then also a lot of grief when that does happen, and you can go down the mindset of worrying what your future will look like.”
Tara Neyland was a keen swimmer as a kid. Supplied.
The diagnosis brought a cyclone of emotions.
“You go through all of the stages of grief, right? I was angry, I was frustrated, I was confused, I was scared, I was sad, and I had to work through all of that over the next couple of months as I started to try to lean into accepting my reality,” Neyland says.
For a long time, she kept her battle a secret, choosing not to even let her family in on the struggle she was facing for seven years pre-diagnosis.
Even when the diagnosis was made, she didn’t initially let her family know.
“I knew my family history and how it had been a bit of a black cloud over the family,” Neyland recalls.
“I didn’t tell my parents I was even getting tested because I saw how much they struggled with my brother’s diagnosis, and I needed to come to terms with it myself before speaking to them. I wanted to make sure I was OK, so I could hold space for their grief in that moment, rather than everyone just being upset together.”
Nowadays, she thinks about her disability totally differently to in years gone by.
“I had to realise that there’s nothing wrong with having muscular dystrophy,” she says.
“It’s just a part of me, it’s not defining, and I’m still incredibly capable. My body just works slightly differently.
“I was in a very dark space. Watching the Paris Paralympics [in 2024] inspired me – seeing athletes doing extraordinary things despite their impairments. It helped me realise that regardless of this diagnosis, I am capable, and it doesn’t have to stop me.”
Neyland made her debut as a para athlete in 2025. A year on, she owns five world championship gold medals.
In Glasgow this week, she’s locked in for the C4-5 4000m individual pursuit and the C4-5 one-kilometre time trial.
Firmly in her sights are the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
“I don’t feel anger; I feel a great sense of gratitude, purpose, and urgency,” says Neyland, who supports her career through the Australian Sports Foundation.
“I have a fire in my belly to do as much as I can while my body is able.
“I’m grateful to be on the Australian national team, to have support, and to race my bike for a living.”
