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.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
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.