What A Year For Alysha!
Australian Funkita women’s springboard diver Alysha Koloi has qualified for her first Olympic Games with her second place in the recent Australian Championships behind Maddison Keeney securing her ticket to Paris. It has been a huge year for Alysha coming off her incredible gold medal victory at the Doha World Championship in the 1 metre springboard.
Koloi admits starting diving grudgingly after realising her promising career as a gymnast was over after a tear in her hip.
“One of my old teammates was in the diving program and she said ‘come down for a play’. I started to enjoy it because of the people but then I fell more in love with the thrill. It is such a different experience from landing on your head after spinning to landing on your feet in gymnastics.”
Koloi has a ritual to never watch other divers or the scoreboard while competing, which led to a very pleasant surprise when she won her first World Championships gold medal.
“Going to Worlds and doing the 1m was just me trying to get a feel of the environment. I had no idea going into the last dive that I was in contention. I was just happy to be in the final as I went in sixth and I was overjoyed with that result. Then they directed me to stand in front of the gold medal poster and competitor after competitor went past, I didn’t move.
“Then it came down to the last diver and I was like “Oh My God! I’m going to win a medal at Worlds, this is so exciting!”
The 22-year-old finished with a score of 260.50, 3.25 points ahead of Great Britian’s silver-medallist Grace Reid and 3.35 points ahead of Egypt’s bronze-medallist Maha Eissa.
Unsurprisingly, Koloi’s star has risen since her victory at World Championships which she sees as an opportunity to get more publicity for diving in Australia.
“It was exciting to come home after Worlds, and I’ve never experienced any kind of support like that before. It is good to be able to see the sport get a bit more publicity because a lot of the time at competitions it is just some mums in the stand saying “Woo!”.”
Koloi is thankful to Australia teammate and 2016 Olympic bronze medallist, Maddison Keeney who she believes has helped raise her standards. Keeney also had a stunning World Championship in Doha, as she added a gold, silver and bronze to her already prestige collection of medals in the mixed 3m synchronised, women 3m synchronised and mixed 3m & 10m synchronised events.
“She is extremely driven, day in day out in our training. Training alongside her every day is pushing me to try and get the most out of every single dive.”
Outside of diving, Koloi works in disability support and childcare and plans to dedicate more time after the Olympics to her goal of helping others.
“I’m enjoying disability support work and childcare as opposed to nursing. I enjoyed the caring side of nursing but I think having to deal with bones sticking out of people’s arms is be a bit too disturbing for me!”
We can’t wait to see Alysha perform in Paris, though we now know she won’t be watching her own event take place while she’s competing!
You can follow Alysha @lysh.a
