Climbers' Olympics - Tom O'Halloran and Amanda Watts with John Sheridan

It’s hard to know where to start in telling this story. It’s been a wild journey. After qualifying for the Olympics in December 2020, we thought things were going to get a bit simpler. We have a date when the Olympics are going to run and a training plan to execute, easy. The reality was a fair bit different. We naively underestimated the path to getting prepared for the biggest sporting event in the world. Perhaps we needed a bit of that to get us to the start line though.

We had big goals and put everything into making it happen. No stone was left unturned in getting Tom to Tokyo in the best shape possible. One of the biggest challenges was creating a training environment in Australia which had never existed. We were like the bow of a ship, breaking through the ice. This took a huge team effort to get Tom as prepared as we possibly could. We couldn’t be more grateful for the support.

Thank you to everyone that helped along this journey, you’re all incredible. Thank you to those who donated to the ASF fundraiser and sent messages of support. It was truly humbling to see how amazing and psyched you all are. Thank you to everyone at Sport Climbing Australia for all the hard work behind the scenes. Thank you to Tom’s sponsors for all their support. Thank you to the climbing gyms for giving me the space to train and prepare. Especially Villawood Climbing gym, Skywood Climbing and Nomad Bouldering. Thank you to Lee Cossey and the Move Clinic for the training plans which took Tom’s climbing to another level. Thank you to Amanda Watts and Thrive Sport Nutrition for keeping Tom fuelled and recovered for seven of the hardest months of training he had ever done. Thank you everyone for everything. This is a team sport!

The only thing left to do now, is decide where to get the tattoo.

You can check out the story of the Olympic qualification here on Episode #24.

Check out our chat with Sherro in Episode #15. He is a power lifting coach and runs Burley Strength in Canberra.

 

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