Olympic Hopes
Year 11 student Ava represented the nation at the Gangwon 2024 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in South Korea during the holidays. She shared her love for her sport and aims for an Olympic future, with her peers in the Principal’s Assembly.
"The scale of the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) is hard to imagine. The impact starts a year in advance when every hopeful athlete is asked for their uniform measurements. You really get the feeling of the huge team behind you, when you start going through everything you have to sign, like media releases and athlete conduct and anti-doping forms.
If you can imagine a giant party with no alcohol or loud music, that’s what it’s like to live in the athlete village. When you enter your room, there’s a suitcase waiting for you with your name on it, and it’s stuffed full of boots, sneakers, and every other thing that’s part of your Australian uniform, and heaps more.
Each country’s athletes live together with their doctors, physios, media representatives, photographers, and Chef de Mission. World champion mogul skier, Britt Cox, was our athlete mentor for biathlon. It is a winter sport where you ski cross-country with a rifle on your back and shoot, rather than swimming and cycling.
At the opening ceremony, the host said that while competition is important, making friends and learning about different cultures is equally as important. So, there was a centre called Athlete 365 where we had the chance to hang out with competitors from all over the world, complete challenges and earn badges. It is really fun to meet athletes your own age, who have made just as many sacrifices and been as lucky as you.
I’ve always been very inspired by the Olympic values of friendship, respect, and excellence. The Olympic rings are the most powerful symbol of international cooperation that I can think of. But I can’t call myself a Youth Olympian, only a Youth Olympic athlete, because the word Olympian is reserved for people who’ve been to the real thing. The Youth Olympics is just the dress rehearsal, and there are many deserving athletes who don’t get to go because they aren’t the right age.
Through biathlon, I learned that you have very little control over what happens in a race – the only thing you can control is what you do before. By the time you get to the start, it’s too late. Part of the reason my shooting didn’t improve when I tried harder, was because I was putting too much pressure on myself. The harder I tried, the worse I shot.
When you are at the mat, with all eyes on you, knowing that every miss leads to a time penalty or a penalty loop, learning to cope with that pressure is the great challenge and great beauty of my sport.
So, to try to take off some pressure during a shooting event, I told myself that I had already achieved my goal of doing my best. This started a virtuous circle: I gained confidence, which led to a better shoot. I am very grateful to my sport for this.
I needed this technique to manage the pressure of competing in the YOG – the biggest event of my life. I was proud to start and finish my YOG campaign as the top-ranked female Australian athlete.
So, part of me was hoping I would be done with training and could lie on the couch and watch Netflix. But there’s another part of me that wants those three letters “OLY” after my name. So, Netflix and the couch are going to have to wait another few years while I make a real Olympic push.
I had dreamed about going to the Youth Olympics for a very long time. Often, I felt like giving up and thought I wasn’t going to make it. But I’ve learned that if you have a goal and a good attitude and the right support, you can do almost anything. And if I can do it, you can too."