{"id":245969,"date":"2025-09-22T09:08:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T09:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/245969\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T09:08:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T09:08:14","slug":"telethon-perth-running-festival-sarah-covella-runs-in-10km-event-to-celebrate-young-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/245969\/","title":{"rendered":"Telethon Perth Running Festival: Sarah Covella runs in 10km event to celebrate young daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Covella spends most mornings pounding the pavement.<\/p>\n

Now, the 34-year-old is lacing up her sneakers to take on the Perth Running Festival 10km event in celebration of her young daughter, Nia.<\/p>\n

The 12-year-old was diagnosed with Dup15q Syndrome when she was just 16 months old \u2014 a rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by a duplication of one of her chromosomes.<\/p>\n

As a result, Nia lives with a number of health conditions including autism, hypotonia and epilepsy.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was diagnosed with Global Development Delay, and the paediatrician said that generally they would like to do genetic testing to make sure there\u2019s no underlying cause,\u201d Sarah said.<\/p>\n

\"NiaCamera IconNia was diagnosed with Dup15q Syndrome when she was just 16 months old. Credit: Jackson Flindell\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I got a call about four-weeks-later to come in, so I knew something was wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cFunnily enough, the paediatrician that we were seeing at the time hadn\u2019t even heard of (Dup15q Syndrome) because it\u2019s so rare so they couldn\u2019t really tell me much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Covella said her daughter visited Perth Children\u2019s Hospital every fortnight, and said she wanted to give back to Telethon by raising funds for the charity after more than a decade of support.<\/p>\n

\u201cTelethon obviously supports the hospital, and in turn, that\u2019s supporting Nia,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"SarahCamera IconSarah Collova with daughter Nia. Credit: Jackson Flindell\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

\u201cNia loves Fat Cat, so that\u2019s another reason to do it, because (Fat Cat) has just been there for Nia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see (her paediatrician) privately, but he\u2019s heavily involved with Telethon and does a lot of research, so that\u2019s another reason I want to do this run, because I know that supports him and he\u2019s been such a huge part of her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Covella said she had already raised over $1900 and said her family was coming down to support the race.<\/p>\n

She said she hoped she could cross the finish line, pushing Nia in her wheelchair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really excited \u2026 I love running, running is my outlet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just seems right to do it and to be able to raise a bit of money at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah Covella spends most mornings pounding the pavement. Now, the 34-year-old is lacing up her sneakers to take…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":245970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[815,50,159,126935,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-245969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-genetics","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-telethon","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115247166817055707","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}