Kayaker plucked from another sport joins new wave of Australian athletes eyeing Olympics

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Just four years after hopping into a kayak, 19-year-old Sammy Lourey is a national champion and has her sights set on the Olympics. But her talent almost went undiscovered.

Transcript

00:00Sammie Lowry is doing a VO2 max test to examine how efficient she is at using oxygen.

00:12She's a scholarship holder at the WA Institute of Sport as a kayaker, a sport she fell into

00:18by accident.

00:19Her coach at Trig Surf Club suggested she try out ways to improve her surf skiing.

00:25I was kind of going to use the process as a way of improving technique mostly for surf

00:30club which is I think how a lot of people start out but fell in love with the sport

00:35and have just continued ever since.

00:38After going through talent identification she was accepted and immediately showed promise.

00:43She got picked up in their talent search program and within about nine months she was national

00:48champion in the under 16 K1 nationals.

00:50So a fairly steep rise and certainly fairly unusual to get to that level in such a short

00:58space of time.

00:59Lowry has her sights set on competing at the highest level.

01:02It's just about enjoying it and reaching my full potential.

01:06If that's the Olympic Games then that's great.

01:08LA certainly, she's on a trajectory that could put her into that space.

01:13We're a stretched target but it's not impossible.

01:19Lowry is one of several scholarship athletes identified through talent days similar to

01:23this one recently held at WACE.

01:26Athletes aged 13 to 23 were invited to undergo testing to see if they have attributes suitable

01:31for sports outside the mainstream.

01:36So all this information and testing results gets provided to the WACE program coaches

01:40here.

01:41They've got years and years of experience of understanding what makes a good athlete

01:44within their sport.

01:45So they'll use their expertise and their experience to identify which athletes from

01:50today they would like to invite to their programs.

01:53With hopes of finding the next big thing in Australian sport.

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