The Weekly celebrates inspiring athletes who are set to do Australia proud at the Paris Olympics and Paralympics.
Tina Rahimi – Boxing
The first Muslim woman to compete internationally as a boxer for Australia, Tina Rahimi grew up in western Sydney.
“I was your naughty, rebellious, funny, talkative little kid. I wasn’t a bad kid, but a bit of an extrovert,” she grins. “And I was happy.” She was also sporty, but she didn’t begin boxing until she was 21.
She took it up for fitness not long after she’d started working as a make-up artist. Even today, Tina always appears in the ring wearing a neatly wrapped hijab and immaculate maquillage. It can take her competitors by surprise, but they quickly learn not to underestimate her. She is a precise and powerful boxer.
In 2022 she won the Australian featherweight title and she claimed gold at last year’s Pacific Games. “Boxing has taught me so many life lessons,” Tina tells The Weekly. “It’s taught me resilience and discipline, sportsmanship and kindness.
Sometimes you lose, and it’s taught me that’s not the end of the world. And these are lessons that carry over into life outside sport. You’ve just got to enjoy the journey, enjoy life’s process.”
Ariarne Titmus – Swimming
Ariarne Titmus might not just be our golden girl, but the best swimmer in the world. At the Australian swimming trials in Brisbane she beat the competition in every race she entered and smashed the 200m freestyle world record.
“The world record is a bonus,” she says. “I’m happy to … put together a swim that I know I’m capable of … It gives me really good confidence for the Olympics.”
The 23-year-old swimmer first captured global attention at the 2019 World Championships when she beat American Katie Ledecky (a now 21-time world champ) to the 400m freestyle gold. Next came her Tokyo Olympic victories, usurping the US star again in both the 400m and 200m events, and winning hearts all over Australia.
She’s aiming for gold in Paris and, she tells The Weekly, “I’m also swimming to see how much better I can get, and that gives me real joy.”
Oceana Mackenzie – Sport Climbing
Climbing isn’t a high-profile sport in Australia, so it’s a massive achievement that 21-year-old Oceana Mackenzie is ranked seventh in the world.
Growing up in Melbourne with five sisters and parents (a microbiologist dad and an acupuncturist mum) whose hobby was climbing, Oceana was making a beeline for the climbing gym walls not long after she could walk.
Climbing is a physical sport but it’s also very much about assessing the spatial geometry of a climb and devising a strategy, so quick thinking is essential.
“There is quite a bit of complexity to climbing,” she tells The Weekly. “Sometimes you can just look at it and go, ‘I actually have no idea how to climb this’.”
Hopefully that won’t happen in Paris, where Oceana will compete at her second Olympics.
Torrie Lewis – Athletics
She is officially Australia’s fastest woman after smashing the national 100m record in January, but 19-year-old Torrie Lewis is just getting started.
“It was surreal when it happened. To keep having that title throughout this whole season, it’s been pretty amazing,” the sprinter told Wide World of Sports of her unexpected record-breaking run.
Torrie’s preferred race is the 200m, which she blitzed at her Diamond League debut in China, beating the current 100m world champion, Sha’Carri Richardson.
She started her sporting career as a gymnast, but her speed on the track was undeniable and she switched sports at age 11. Torrie is heading to Paris as part of the women’s 4x100m relay team.
Mary Hanna – Equestrian Dressage
Twenty-eight years after her Olympic debut at Atlanta, equestrian dressage competitor Mary Hanna, 69, is hoping Paris will be her seventh Olympics.
Considered the most artistic equestrian sport, dressage is about “feeling and timing”, Mary told The Weekly when we visited her property in 2022. At the time of writing, Mary and her horse, Ivanhoe, are on track to qualify for Paris, but have not yet been confirmed.
“Dressage is a beautiful sport open to people of any age,” she says. “It’s about your rapport and relationship with the horse, which I think is one of the most beautiful things about dressage … Nothing will replace the passion I feel for the horses.”
Rachael Gunn – Breaking
Rachael Gunn (AKA Raygun) is not only Australia’s first female Olympic-level breaking competitor but the holder of a PhD in breaking culture. And that’s breaking, not “break dancing”, which is a term the media made up.
“I’ve danced my whole life,” says Rachael, who tried ballroom dancing, jazz, tap, studio hip hop, swing dancing and salsa. When she started breaking, something just clicked.”
“I entered my first competition in 2012 and I did terribly. I forgot all my moves. I lost my beanie! But it was such a thrill. I was hooked.” Now her goal – “to be the best I can be” – has led her to Paris.
Lakeisha ‘Lucky’ Patterson – Para-swimming
For Lakeisha ‘Lucky’ Patterson, learning to swim was a rite of passage and a form of therapy. Lakeisha has cerebral palsy that affects the left side of her body, and from the age of five, hydrotherapy helped her manage pain and relax her muscles. Swimming also became a passion.
Watching the London 2012 Paralympics on TV, aged 13, she realised she could compete at an elite level. Within two years Lakeisha represented Australia at the Commonwealth Games, where she won bronze.
“It was pure elation. It showed me this Paralympic dream may actually be possible,” Lakeisha says.
Fast forward to Rio 2016 and Lakeisha pushed herself until she had nothing left. “I turned around, saw the number one next to my name. It’s a phenomenal experience. It’s so exhilarating.”
Lakeisha is hoping to win gold again in Paris.
Paige Greco – Para-cycling
Paige Greco has proven she can reach the highest heights, but she has learnt that success does not protect you from devastating lows.
The 27-year-old para-cyclist was born with cerebral palsy and doctors told her parents that she may not be able to run. At school, she defied this. She had her heart set on joining the athletics team for the Rio Paralympics but when she wasn’t selected, she tried cycling. The strength, power and discipline she had developed as a runner made her a serious contender.
Paige set three world records at the 2019 World Championships in the Netherlands and won gold at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. But while competing in Italy in 2023, her dream run was derailed by a serious crash.
“I did think about walking away because it was really scary,” she says. “But I remembered that feeling – the enjoyment of being on the bike, being on the team, competing and winning – which I wanted to get back to.”
After a long, hard recovery Paige is now working towards gold at Paris. “I can only look forward,” she says.
Noemie Fox – Kayak Cross
For the first time, both Fox sisters, Jessica and Noemie (pictured), look set to compete at the Olympics.
Thirty-year-old Jess – with four Olympic medals already – is the most successful paddler in history, and tough competition for Australia’s one place on the women’s canoeing ‘team’. Which is why, this year, 27-year-old Noemie went all out in the international kayak cross competition, hoping to win one of three extra “quota” or wildcard spots. And after scoring silver at the Prague championships, her ticket to Paris is almost guaranteed.
Proud parents and fellow Olympic paddlers Richard (a 10-time world champion) and Myriam (who won an Olympic bronze) will travel to Paris to cheer their daughters on.
The sisters “grew up playing along the riverbank,” Noemie tells The Weekly, “and eventually I found my own love for the sport.”
Now, she adds, “it’s become a passion and a lifestyle. The love for the river, especially natural rivers, is at the heart of it. And it’s pretty amazing to be able to share that with the people who you’re closest to.”
