Background
Bywater was born on 28 February 1983 in Dormanstown, England and currently lives in Cleveland, North Yorkshire. He was born without a tibia and a fibula in his left leg, which was amputated when he was two.
Bywater was born on 28 February 1983 in Dormanstown, England and currently lives in Cleveland, North Yorkshire. He was born without a tibia and a fibula in his left leg, which was amputated when he was two.
As of 2009, he weighs 74 kilograms (11 st 9 lb) and is 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in) tall. He has a son, Benjamin Bywater. Bywater began playing wheelchair basketball at the age of 13 at an open day in Middlesbrough with the Teesside Lions.
He later played with them.
After playing for a year, he was selected for the Great Britain Under-23 team and began training in 1993. He made his debut at the Sydney 2000 Summer Paralympics, and finished fourth.
He currently plays for the Sheffield Steelers. He once played for C. Doctorate. Fundosa in Spain, along with many other European clubs.
Bywater returned to England so he could play with the Super League Club Sheffield Steelers throughout the 2011-2012 season.
He is a 4.5 point player. His first championships were the 2001/2002 European Championships in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he finished fourth. In 2002 he went to the World Championships in Kitakyushu in Japan, where he finished second (silver).
In 2010, for the first time, he participated in the World Wheelchair Basketball Championships in Birmingham, and was fifth place.
At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the wheelchair basketball team lost to the United States, and finished in fourth position, after losing to Canada, missing out of the finals. He said that not winning a medal at the Paralympics was the "worst moment" of his career.