Sports

Recently, the grade 3 to 6 students were able to take part in an online presentation from Olympian Georgia Griffith, who has just returned to Melbourne from Tokyo after completing her 14 day required quarantine period.

Georgia is one of Australia's leading 800m/1500m runners who has earned Australian tracksuits at two IAAF World Championships and has now made her Olympic debut in Tokyo, where she ran the 1500m. She had to overcome a series of injuries to qualify for the Games and finished a very creditable 7th in her race.

Georgia presented a 30 minute talk/slideshow followed by a Q and A session. She touched on her journey to getting selected for the Olympics, the Olympic experience as well as some of her ‘learnings’ along the way (motivation, goal setting and dealing with setbacks etc.)

One of the major things that she discussed was how to handle nerves and stress in life and how to bring perspective to disappointments and challenges.

She showed us a picture of her as a young child at the Sydney Olympics as a spectator and she said she sometimes needs to look at these pictures and “speak to 10 year old Georgia” to remind herself how far she has come. 

The students had the opportunity to ask her about overcoming injuries, her training load, diet, what sports she played as a child, who inspires her and the Olympic Village, particularly the restaurant and the cardboard beds!!

Felicity and Phoebe Scarff commented after the session:

“Dear Mrs Pain and Mrs Travis thank you so much for organising that Webex with Georgia Griffith it was an amazing experience. It also helped me and a lot of the other people on the calls motivation for getting out and doing some activity. It was really inspiring for me to see someone who has achieved their goal so maybe I could achieve mine. Thank you so much. From Felicity.”

“Dear Mrs Pain, Thank you so much for the meeting with Georgia Griffith it really inspired me to train more and more. We really appreciated the effort you put into that call it made an impact on everybody to follow their dream. My favourite part from the call was everything like when she told us about what gets her through the nervousness. Thank you again! From Phoebe.”

Mrs. Pain