WORDS AND PHOTOS Sam Walker

Emily Seebohm has set her sights on next year’s Olympics.

The Queenslander has already represented Australia, won gold and been in a world record-breaking team.

This year the energetic young woman has travelled to Hawaii, California, Malaysia and Japan. And in 2008, while her friends are focusing on passing Year 10, Emily has set her sites on the Beijing Olympics.

Emily, a student at St John Fisher College in Brisbane’s northern suburbs, is one of the youngest members of the Australian swimming team.

With a warm smile and a bubbly nature, this easy-going teenager takes her commitments in her stride and brushes off any suggestion she is any different to her peers.

‘I guess my life is pretty normal apart from swimming every afternoon and most mornings’, she says.

On weekends she likes to go surfing—she has a ‘cute yellow board with a blue flower’—spend time with her friends and go to the movies as often as she can.

But school principal Maree Messer paints a different picture and says while the school and Emily’s parents work hard to ensure her life is as normal as possible, her work load, training regimen and experiences are far different to most students’.

Ms Messer says Emily’s outstanding success combined with her personality make her a good role model for her peers.

‘She is a very active, positive girl and they can see girls like them can achieve things’, Ms Messer says.

But she points out there are sacrifices that come with success—and these aren’t just about hard work. She said Emily loves socials, but because of competition commitments can’t always attend parties and events with friends.

‘But the people that she will be meeting with and the experiences she will be having will be so much richer’, Ms Messer says.

Emily likes to think she is a good student and says juggling school and swimming was ‘not really that hard’.

Having a lot of spare study periods helps her get ahead before going away and catch up once she returns and the school has a learning support program she can tap into to help with things she’s missed.

Emily’s immediate plans hinge on the Olympics.

‘My plans for the future would have to be Beijing but if I don’t make that … it won’t matter because after that there’s always London.’

As for career plans, the grade nine student would like to carve a path in the world of cosmetics.

‘I wanted to go and do the Napoleon Perdis make-up course because I like making myself up’, she says.

Emily was practically born in the swimming pool—her mum was a swimming teacher—and she has been in the water since she was a baby. She chose backstroke because she found it the easiest.

Coming from an avid sporting family, Emily used to do boxing, soccer and gymnastics before swimming took over her life. The change has happened quickly. She was about 12 when she started swimming in Australian championships at school, and 14 when she entered open competitions, vying for glory against all age groups.

The teenager cites going to the FINA World Championships earlier this year, where she won gold in the medley relay as a member of the world record breaking team, as the highlight of her short swimming career.

‘It was just an amazing feeling and I’ve never had anything like it’, she says.