2025 TAS Young Australian of the Year Ariarne Titmus OAM

Australian Community Media

Meet your Australians - 2025 TAS Young Australian of the Year Ariarne Titmus OAM. ACM is proud to be media partner for the 2025 Australian of the Year Awards.

Transcript

00:00I think that unless you're in high-performance sports striving for something like an Olympic

00:07gold medal, you can't really comprehend the work it takes and the trade-offs you make

00:11in your life. It takes a lot of work. I train between 35 and 40 hours a week. Every decision

00:17you make in your life is to ensure that you're recovered and ready to go for every session.

00:21I train out of a high school. It's incredible that a high-performance program with athletes

00:27that are on the national team that are winning at Olympic Games train out of a secondary

00:30school in Western Brisbane. And we have the youngest swimmers train next to us every day

00:37and they look up to us. And I think it's really important for them to see that we are training

00:43just like them. And I think that's a really important piece. Not putting yourselves on

00:48a pedestal. My ultimate goal is to enable young women and young girls to stay in sport

00:55longer. The current dropout rate of girls in sport at 15 years old is 50%. And I really

01:02want that to change. And by doing that, we need to put more money and resources into

01:06research into girls in sport. Over the past 100 or so years, only 2% of research has been

01:13done on the female body in athletic performance. And I think that this whole push for women

01:18in sport is only at the cusp. And I hope that me doing what I'm doing at the moment can

01:25inspire people to keep backing women and seeing young girls have more opportunities

01:30and are given more chances to see that sport can be a career path for them when they're

01:37young. I met a little girl in my hometown in Launceston after the Paris Olympics. And

01:42she told me she did a school project on me and wrote a story about her and I racing each

01:47other at the Olympics. And the most important part of the story was when we finished the

01:52race, she said, I turned to my competitors and congratulate them because Arianne does

01:58as well. And it made me cry. I want people to realise that no matter where you come from,

02:05whether you're male or female, whatever religion, race, that if you have a goal, if you have

02:10a dream, if you want to start something new, if you want to make change for the better,

02:14you can certainly achieve whatever you like, if you are willing to work hard and you believe

02:19in yourself.

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