The Tasmanian Sports Institute gives a hand to a young skateboarder to realize her Olympic dream

Update

November 30, 2018 13:15:54

It's Hobart's adolescence, Grace Cochrane, who led her to participate in her first skateboarding competition.

She did not know that she would be on the road to becoming a potential Olympian.

"A lot of my skate friends were competing and I'm a very competitive person, so I thought I'd try it," she says.

This decision is beginning to bear fruit.

"I have participated in my first international competitions this year, and I hope to be able to continue this year and you never know what will happen from there."

Taroona High School, a 15-year-old student, recently finished 22nd in the "park and bowl" category at the last world championships.

Today, she has become the first recipient of a skateboarding scholarship from the Tasmanian Sport Institute (TIS), joining a group dominated by cyclists, rowers, and riders. hockey players.

"This [scholarship] "It helps me a lot because it helps me move to Australia," Cochrane says.

"We do not have a lot of facilities here in Tasmania to help develop young skaters, so being able to travel around the country and around the world helps us a lot.

"I hope this will encourage other skaters, and especially skaters, to strive to be the best skaters possible."

Cochrane thanks the local skate group of girls for initiating the sport.

"There is a group based at Elizabeth College Skate Park called She Shreds that is really inclusive and supportive," she says.

"I heard about it and I decided to go there and I liked it."

Its inclusion in the TIS is strategic.

Since skateboarding was accepted at the Tokyo Games in 2020, Cochrane was identified as a potential representative of Australia after scoring among the top six in the national rankings.

"As a parent, it's not easy to watch"

Cochrane's mother, Miranda Harman, never thought her daughter would be an Olympic athlete, but did not doubt that she could go to the end.

"I still wince a little, but not as much as when she started," she says.

"This is not the easiest sport to watch for a parent.

"She is resilient, she works very hard, she is determined, she has always been a child who gets up after her fall and tries again."

TIS Director Paul Austen said the decision to award Cochrane a Tasmanian Sport Institute Scholarship was representative of the evolution of Tasmanian sport.

"When I started doing skateboarding, we would not have considered this sport," he says.

"It's exciting and good for the staff to look at different techniques, different strength exercises that we might need to do and learn a completely different sport without the rowers and cyclists we normally work with."

And skating may only be the tip of the iceberg, as the sport continues to evolve around the world, even computer games being seen as a possible Olympic candidate. .

"Certainly not yet, but in the next 10 years, it will be interesting to see how e-sport will be integrated into the Olympics, some say it will happen, but I'm not so sure of it," he said. -he declares. .

A total of 111 athletes received TIS awards in the talent development, high performance and badociate categories.

Topics:

sport,

summer olympics,

education,

Hobart 7000,

heap

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First posted

November 30, 2018 12:47:56