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Arts & Authors Sports p37 from p22 Minnamurra Kiama Downs Jamberoo Bombo Kiama Kiama Heights Gerringong Gerroa
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Credit : Grace Stewart
When the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics kicks off in less than two weeks, ten local athletes will compete on the biggest sports stage in the world. The Australian Olympic team also features the highest percentage of women in Olympic history, almost 56 per cent. Two of them who’ll don the green and gold are Hockeyroos’ co-captain and forward Grace Stewart, and tennis player Ellen Perez. This will be Grace’s third appearance after Rio 2016 where she made her Olympic
Credit : Grace Stewart
debut and Tokyo 2020. “I think Paris is going to be incredible with everyone’s friends and families here, especially compared to Tokyo where we had no crowds,” the Gerringong-native says over the phone from Perth. Twenty-seven-year-old Stewart moved out west in 2016 after being awarded a Hockey Australia Scholarship to train with the senior team. The Hockeyroos hope “to
they could definitely have been in the Hockeyroos if they stuck to it, so I tell them to Credit : Getty Images come back and we can all play come home with a medal this pics, it’s that, “nothing else together,” she laughs. time,” she continues. In Rio, matters until you turn up and Playing with her sisters, the team lost to New Zealand perform on that day”. cousins and best friends in the quarter finals, and at Stewart’s sister Lilly and in Gerringong is how it all Tokyo, India put an end to Demi, along with her parbegan. their Olympic dreams. ents, will be watching from “That’s why hockey was But since then, they have the stands in Paris. Both of so fun. Then I was lucky worked a lot on the mental her sisters are former hockey enough to continue down side of things. Because if it’s players, having represented this path and get to where one thing that Stweart has NSW. I am today. But it wouldn’t learned from previous Olym“They like to tell me that have happened if I hadn’t
started playing in Gerringong on the grassfields and fallen in love with the game there,” she says. Ellen Perez grew up a bit further north of Gerringong, in Shellharbour. As a junior, she played for Oak Flats Tennis Club. Currently, 28-year-old Perez ranks as the seventh best female doubles player in the world, having won her biggest WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) doubles title this year. The Tokyo Olympics, her first, saw Perez partnering continued on p 2
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