From age 12, Elle Steele knew she wanted to become a Paralympian.
Even better, she knew she wanted to become a Paralympic gold medalist.
At just 17 years old, she achieved that dream,
representing Australia at the Sydney 2000 Games
and breaking the 400m freestyle record along the way.
After retiring from swimming, she made the switch to wheelchair rugby
and became the first female to represent Victoria in the sport.
But when injury stopped her competing altogether,
neurolinguistics gave her a new lease on life.
Elle quickly learnt the power that language can have
on one's perception of disability, but also one's sense of self.
Now she works as the aptly titled self-belief agent,
helping others to unlock their potential.
My name's Sophie and I'm the producer here at the Female Athlete Project.
Chloe caught up with Elle amidst the buzz and lead-up
to the 2024 Paralympics.
This chat demonstrates the power of positivity and self-belief.
Elle shows that if you can first believe in yourself,
then anything is truly possible.
We hope you enjoy it.
Elle, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.
Thanks for having me.
I'm so excited we finally got to do this.
It's been a long time coming and this is going to be a great chat,
but we were chatting off-air about your little podcast series.
You're a pro in all areas of life,
but I want to hear about your podcast series.
I want to hear about your podcast series.
I want to hear about your podcast series.
I want to hear about your podcast series.
I want to hear about your podcast series.
I want to hear about your podcast series.
I want to hear about this podcast series that you did last Christmas.
Me and my best friend Rose, so we've got a 37-year friendship.
We met at three-year-old kinder and we're obsessed with Christmas movies.
So we've been rating them for probably maybe five years just on Instagram
and then last year we decided to do a podcast called Merry Moviemas
and we rated the high-end Netflix Christmas movies.
So it's only got, I think, three or four episodes.
We're going to do it again this year.
It's essentially just unhinged conversation between two best friends
and then we give you a rating for the movies.
Yeah, it was really fun.
I didn't know you'd done it, so I'm definitely going to get onto it.
I love a Netflix Christmas movie.
They're so trashy, but they're so good.
And, like, there's particular ones that I love where it's the same character
playing two people.
And then she puts an English accent or some kind of weird accent
on for one of them.
I can't even think of what that one's called.
Lindsay Lohan made a comeback.
Like, it was just, yeah, so, so, yeah, it was great.
And we, as I mentioned before, Chad Michael Murray,
anything related to him from, you know, One Tree Hill from our childhood.
Are you an OG One Tree Hill fan?
I used to love it.
I'm not fully an OG.
I'm more like an OC.
Like, that's when I kind of got into those shows, but, yeah.
We'll actually start talking about proper sport things now,
but I cannot wait for the next edition of that podcast series.
Can you take us back to Elle as a little kid and describe what you were like
and how you found a love for sport?
I was a pretty angry kid.
I didn't really understand why.
I was in a body that was different to other people.
I was the only kid with a disability in my school.
I've got two able-bodied sisters and my parents are both able-bodied,
or I like to call you muggles.
And I, yeah, I was a kid that would, didn't know how to express her emotions
so occasionally would just absolutely erupt into, like, anger and frustration
and emotion and couldn't relate.
You, like, regulate.
And then my mum and dad found a club called, or an organisation called
Wheelchair Sports Victoria, which is now Disability Sport and Recreation,
and I joined that as an 11-year-old and started swimming on Sunday mornings
with a group of probably five other kids, around five other kids
with just lots of different types of disabilities.
And it was this beautiful moment where I could see that I,
there was a community for me, and I just happened to also be good.
And I'd done lessons and stuff, so it was a very comfortable place
for me to be in, and I had something of my own, which was really special too.
Did you, from a young age, know that you then wanted
to become a Paralympian?
I decided, I remember the moment.
I was about 12 years old.
It was after my first national competition when I was 11 that was really successful,
and I was standing on our, we've got a holiday house in East Gippsland
that's really remote.
And I was standing on the veranda, and I don't really remember
what I was doing probably.
I love, like, as a kid, and still too, I'm quite artistic,
and I do a lot of drawing and painting and that kind of stuff
and imaginary things.
And I was standing there, and I was like, I am going to go
to the Paralympics, and I'm going to win a gold medal for Australia.
And it's interesting because my story is, yes, I won a gold medal
for Australia, but not at the Paralympics.
And it took me a long time.
It took me a long time to kind of be okay with that because we're such,
and you'll be watching the Olympics and the Paralympics at the moment.
Like, it's so, the emotion behind when someone wins a gold medal
because it's the dream that you always had for yourself,
it took me a long time to kind of be okay with the fact that it was,
my big dream was different to what I had first said it would be in my head.
But, yeah, at 12 years old, I decided I was going,
and then everything kind of fell into place,
and I had an amazing support team that helped me get there.
But I had no, like, you can't even conceptualise what the effort
that you put in to go.
I love watching all the stuff on social media where people make comment
about the Olympics and Paralympics and, oh, I could do that,
or I could do that.
I'm like, you could do that.
Like, you have to be a different type of human.
And that's not to say that, like, one is better than the other
or anything like that.
It just is, like, if you really want to do it, it's a lifestyle change.
How did you come to terms with the fact that you got your gold medal
but not in the way that you anticipated it as a little kid?
Because I think sometimes even as athletes you can watch it.
Like, I don't know if you feel the same as an athlete when I watch, say,
like, the Olympics are on.
We're about to prepare for the Paralympics.
When I see these athletes winning gold medals, like the women in the relay
and things like that in the swimming, there's a sense of, like,
it makes all those early mornings, all the hard work worth it.
But how is it that you reconcile as an athlete when it's not the exact dream
but you still put in all the hard work to get there?
I feel like I'm maybe, like, 80% there.
I don't know whether I'll ever fully be okay.
I don't know whether I'll ever fully be okay with the outcome of my story.
It took me, like, I still cry a lot when I watch the Olympics
and the Paralympics.
It took me a long time to be able to watch the swimming, like,
years and years and years to be able to watch any kind of nationals
or even the Olympics or Paralympics.
And that's also because of other things that happened in my career too.
I know that what happened in my career was meant to happen for my soul.
And so I think because I've done the other extra kind of healing work
on how I feel about myself and self-acceptance and self-belief
and all that kind of stuff that I'm okay with it.
But I definitely feel in moments of vulnerability or moments of, like,
when I'm a bit tired or my body's...
Hurting a bit that I...
And I even, like, last night I was watching some stuff on my phone
before I went to sleep, as we all do.
Don't tell me that you don't.
And I said to myself, people just don't understand, like,
the emotion behind winning a gold medal for your country,
if that has been your goal since you were a kid.
And, yeah, I just...
I knew that there were elements of my career,
when I made the Australia A team or the, you know,
the Paralympic team, that I was not as fast as the other swimmers.
But the things that kind of happened in my career after that
to get in the way in some kind of way never allowed me to really,
I wonder, get to my peak.
You know, I had to retire due to injury and stuff like that.
So I don't know whether I really ever got to really kind of give it all,
my all, just because of how my body is,
It's a bit frustrating, but then also, like,
you can worry about it or wallow in it,
or you can just take a deep breath and love yourself anyway.
Yeah, I love that.
How do you reflect on the Sydney 2000 Paralympics at 17 years old?
I had a massage with my mate the other day and she actually, you know,
we were talking about the Olympics and the Paralympics,
and she said to me, how was Sydney?
And my first reaction was, it was not good.
But I don't think that it was not good.
I think that I was 17 and I couldn't conceptualise part of it.
There was also a lot of angst and there was uncomfortability on the team.
There was a lot of hierarchy and stuff like that.
And as a 17-year-old, I didn't really know how to kind of manage that
and the pressure.
And I wonder if the pressure was...
Maybe it's like this at all Olympics or Paralympics or world stage stuff,
but the pressure felt even more because it was a home games
and it was also a games when the Paralympics were finally being seen
as like worthy to watch and people coming to see it.
And so there was a lot of that kind of the element of,
well, you better step up or, you know.
But I'm really grateful for a lot of the things that happened within that team
because I learned...
I learned about the power of judgment on other people.
So the judgment that was on me as an athlete and as a 17-year-old girl
placed on me by other people was...
And, you know, I've probably never talked about this,
was not fair and was pretty gross and disgusting.
But I grew from that.
Like I became a more powerful woman because of that.
Did it take you a long time to, like as your career continued
off the back of that, to adapt to...
Obviously it was not appropriate, the level that was put on you,
but how did you kind of adapt as you moved on throughout your career?
Probably with a bit of disassociation.
But, you know, I think I'm just...
I'm a really resilient person and my body and my life has been,
you know, interesting in the sense of just living with a disability
that is not meant to be degenerative but kind of ends up being degenerative.
And so I just learned that I can choose how I want to feel and react to things.
And I learned that my mind is so much more powerful than so much of the people give it...
You know, your mind is so much more powerful than people give it credit for.
And so I just decided that I didn't believe any of that stuff
that what other people had believed about me and they didn't even really know me.
So I could walk through the world worrying,
think about what people thought of me, or I could just take a deep breath
and keep on trying to be the best version of myself and the best, you know, athlete.
And I retired from swimming to go to rugby, to wheelchair rugby,
and I think that was a really cathartic and, like, healing experience for me
because I was the only female.
I was the first female to play in the state, for my state,
and then around nationally.
And that was a really beautiful experience for me to go back into a sport
and, you know, to be an elite athlete again.
And within a community that really, that I felt really loved and supported, yeah.
Not that I didn't feel that in my swimming.
It was just different.
Like, individual sport and team sport is so different.
How did you see the Tokyo Paralympics?
I think there was a real, you talked about the Sydney 2000 shift in perception,
but I think the Tokyo Paralympics was a really big moment for people to,
even from, like, a broadcast perspective,
it felt like there was a real shift in perception.
Yeah, I think that people are finally realising that we're just as elite
and it's just as exciting and there are things that make it a little bit more complicated,
like classification, that you may not understand.
But the commentary by people like Ellie Cole and Dylan Alcott and Kurt Fearnley
is just, like, they're so knowledgeable, even Louis Sauvage,
they're so knowledgeable in that space that it's just,
like, about learning kind of another language.
But also the classification often doesn't really,
it comes into it for the athlete.
They need to know, you know, in terms of winning and getting close
to the world record and stuff, but it doesn't mean that you can't watch
and be excited by someone from your country achieving a beautiful dream
that they've always wanted to achieve.
So, yeah, I think that I used to think, oh, God,
like a thing's not going to change in my lifetime,
They're starting to change and the conversation even,
the different conversations we're now having in disability sport
around access and inclusion being a real, actually being more
of a mindset shift than a compliance conversation is so powerful
and so validating for my community because so much of it has been,
oh, we better tick this box and this box to be accessible
or to show that we care.
There's so much work that happens before you tick the box.
It's actually about cultural and systemic change of what you believe
a person with a disability can bring to your organisation
or sporting club or bring to your community rather
than like just putting a ramp in.
The ramp comes like way later.
It's such an important discussion.
What impact does that have when it's a shift to it being a mindset
and empowerment thing rather than ticking a box?
I know for me as a person,
with a disability, I finally feel like someone,
like I feel that people actually, can I swear?
I feel like people give a shit.
Like I feel like people actually are trying to, you know,
make a difference because they see me as a whole person,
not as the problem that society still sometimes sees disability as.
And I don't know whether you've heard of the medical model
or the social model of disability, but there's two different ways
that we look at disability.
And, you know, there's the kind of archaic way,
which is the medical model that the person
with the disability is the problem.
And they're the problem.
That's why they can't access what they need to be able to access.
And it's because their body doesn't fit what society has deemed as appropriate.
Whereas the social model of disability tells us that the reason that I'm disabled is because the world
is not built for me and that there's no opportunities for me or the way that people view me is
because I, of what we've always been told about disability.
And so as we move more into like,
this is what's been so great about social media and the conversations that we're having online,
because it means more accessible for us.
You know, we don't have to try and get somewhere that we can't get.
That the conversation is changing from the medical model to the social model.
Which is really cool and exciting.
And that's really empowering because it means that we are leading the conversations rather
than the people that have thought they had to rescue us.
We don't need rescuing.
We just need people to listen to us.
I've also seen you talk about this idea of needing to shift away from an athlete with a disability
or a Paralympian being described as inspiring.
Do you think that's happened enough?
Like, do you think that's still something you're saying?
They love a little bit of inspiration porn, which was that porn that's coined by Stella Young,
or late Stella Young.
She was an amazing disability advocate.
You know, I think, I remember a guy said to me when I was working in corporate, he was like,
I went to the gym this morning because I thought if Elle gets up and comes to work,
then I can go to the gym.
And I was like, what?
And this was like the peak of my retirement.
I was in a bit of a blackout.
I was in a black hole with, you know, doctors saying, don't do this because you'll hurt your ankle.
And don't do that because you'll hurt your back.
And you got to be careful of your shoulder.
I did it like all, I basically couldn't do any kind of real physical movement and for a long time.
And it was, that was not a helpful comment for that person to make, to make for me.
And I'm like, well, why is it that I'm inspiring just for getting out of bed?
I'm, there's nothing inspirational about me.
I'm getting up and doing.
What I need to do to go to my employment, to make money, to live, you know, and I,
there's a little bit of that still kind of floating around.
Um, I hope that people realize that we're not inspiring because of our disabilities.
And maybe sometimes we are, but for the most part, I think where everyone's inspiring because
of the way they look at the world or the way they handle, you know, when something
confronting comes their way.
That doesn't necessarily just happen to people with disabilities that happens across the board.
I'd love to look at your transition away from sport and, um, particularly your work around,
is it neuro-linguistics?
Can you share about what, what is neuro-linguistics and how do you apply it?
Um, you, so NLP or neuro-linguistics, you can apply it in an, in a evil way,
if you want to manipulate someone.
Which you can watch plenty of Netflix, uh, docos on that, or you can be a good person
and use it to heal the way you believe what you believe and, um, assist people to do the same.
So the work that I do now with NLP and in like the kind of spiritual healing energetic, I call it
integrated energy therapies space is, um, to assist people to shift, um, their minds and their
So to embody the person that they want to be in their life.
And the reason that I went into NLP was, and like life coaching and that kind of stuff was because I
wanted to learn how to articulate the message that I was trying to tell the world.
And it's really funny because I don't know whether I really learned how to do that through that.
I learned how to do that from actually just going out and telling my story and realizing that so much
of it was, um, so much of the stuff.
That I needed to learn for myself was actually what I was meant to teach the world.
And it was about self-belief and radical self-acceptance and realizing that, you know, you,
there is no, you're not, um, losing the game.
If you're taking a little bit longer than someone else to achieve a dream that you want to achieve
or, um, that entrusting in that there was some kind of bigger purpose for me.
I don't know whether it really, I know that some people don't kind of really get it or, um, resonate
with it, but it was something that was really powerful for me to, to look at what I believe in,
in, in particularly in the sense of, well, when in my kind of mid to late twenties, I felt like I
was so disabled and I felt like I was unlovable and not worthy of, um, any of the achievements
I achieved really young and not worthy of really achieving anything else.
I was just kind of like a bit of a blob.
You're like moving through life without any really real direction.
And what new linguistics gave me was the realization that if I think a particular thought,
then that often will pop up in my life.
Like people are a mirror to me.
So what you see in other people is in you and, and that kind of stuff.
And so what began to, what, what had been happening was that I would go out,
like dancing, or I would just with my mates on a Friday night, or I would go, um, out to just
generally to the shops or the supermarket.
And people would say weird things to me.
Um, can I pray for you?
If I was like you, if I was in your situation, I would have already killed myself, all this
like awful, awful stuff.
And I realized that I, in some aspect of my own belief around who Elle was,
that I believed I needed, I was broken.
I needed to be fixed or that, that I wasn't worthy of living or I was, I was unhappy.
And this kind of came after the end of my swimming career.
Um, and so with NLP, it was like a flick of a switch.
I was like, actually, I'm going to go out into the world.
And I do this now with my talks.
I talk a lot about this, that when I go out and do a presentation, I walk into the room,
um, believing that everyone is obsessed with me.
Um, and that I'm obsessed with me and that my story is amazing.
And then I'm going to change people's mindsets and that I, I'm like this embodiment of light
and, you know, happiness and, you know, whatever I want to believe on the day, like, and it
was this moment where I went, oh my God, if the reason that I feel, the reason people
are showing me this in the world is because I believe that about myself.
And as soon as I stopped that belief, literally.
People stopped saying awful, weird things to me.
It's incredibly powerful.
Yeah, it was, it changed my life because it set me free from the story, from the story
that society still plays out with disability that you are, you know, you won't amount to
much you, you, and this is not every story we have.
We, you know, Australian of the year, we had Dylan Alcott, which was incredible for us,
but there is still underpinnings.
There's still stories within our society that believes that people with disabilities
will not contribute.
And the reason that we, it's harder for us to contribute is because the world is not
built for us to be able to do it with ease and support.
And so it was, it was incredible for me because I, I believe that I, I turned my life around
And it just became part of my everyday life.
And I learned to check on myself and, you know, when I'm saying something that has a
negative connotation, I'm questioning why I believe that.
And, um, it's been, it's been really powerful.
Can we tap into the, everyone in the room is obsessed with me.
How does that work in practice?
So, um, cause I want to try this before I do my talks.
I want to steal this.
Did you watch 10?
This is a good, yes.
So I love that show so much.
So, um, and a good way to, to, uh, give an example of that is Rebecca when she makes
herself bigger and, you know, power posing and all that kind of stuff.
So I will sit in the car beforehand or I will, um, put on like a ridiculously nineties pop
playlist in the car on my way to there.
And so something to the time.
of, um, Pussycat Dolls or you know, or something like that.
Um, the music that comes out of my car, my poor support care worker.
Um, but yeah, I'll listen to something like that, that will kind of hype me up.
And I just, I just say to myself, Yeah, everyone is upset.
I just, everyone's obsessed with me.
Everyone wants to know my story.
This is going to be the most incredible job that I've ever done.
And I'm going to feel really good.
My voice is going to be really strong in the projection.
I'm going to feel really light when I'm there.
The temperature of the room is going to be perfect.
I basically just describe the perfect situation for myself.
And it's, you know, I'll even say things like people believe I'm a celebrity.
They think they put me on, you know, they think that I am the top of the top.
Like I'm the best speaker in Australia.
Everyone's obsessed with me.
And, yeah, I just keep on saying it to myself while that kind of music is playing.
And it just switches me into believing that that is the truth.
This is like I don't think of everyone.
I mean if any of the rugby boys listen to this, they'll think it's hilarious.
But on Friday nights when I had to drive from Brunswick to, oh, where was it,
like Surrey Hills to play rugby and it was like going against the traffic,
I would listen to.
I would listen to songs that made me feel really hot and so that when I got
to the court I felt really sexy and, like, powerful, like hot babe.
And, like, the boys would always be like, you look so good tonight.
I'm like, oh, yeah, I do.
And it would just change the energetics and the feeling I felt about myself
and I felt really powerful on court.
And I noticed, everyone should do this behind the blocks, you know,
I noticed that when I gave, I allowed myself to do that practice,
as silly as it was.
And I always played more powerfully and I, like, it was like I was like I had more
muscles and I was just stronger in myself compared to the days that I was worried
about, oh, my God, I'm rushing and I'm trying to get there
and I wasn't listening to something that made me feel powerful.
And so, yeah, I just kept on doing that in different areas of my life.
And you've now carried that across to be able to empower other people,
to do the same, right?
Yeah, so I do that in different programs.
So I've got the Self-Belief Club, which is for athletes,
and then I've got my integrated energy healing work that I do in a program
called Star School and we work on emotional intelligence as well
as, like, the energetics that you have within your body because we're all made
of molecules and we can move and shift and, you know,
heal different parts of ourselves that may not,
be working for the best, you know, in our different areas of life.
We store a lot of emotions that we, you know,
we store trauma in our bodies and our thighs and that's why when you have a
massage it often hurts a lot and you feel emotional and those sorts of stuff.
So we work a lot through those areas because that was such a powerful thing
for me when I retired from swimming.
It was one of the ways that I healed my heart.
How much purpose have you got from that feeling of being able to heal?
And being able to pass it on to other people because I think sport as an
athlete, it takes so much to get there.
You touched on how much it takes to even get to the Paralympics and in a sense
being an athlete is quite a selfish pursuit.
You have a team around you and you want to bring other people joy and things
like that, but how different is that feeling of, like,
stepping out and making a broader impact than just being an athlete?
The purpose that I gather from giving back is,
well, I feel like it's what, I feel like it's why I got into sport.
I feel like maybe my story and what happened to me,
I wasn't meant to be the best of the best because it gave me, like,
really good stories, but it gave me the opportunity to work out ways to
move through moments of deep pain.
So, you know, like the end of my, close to the end of my swimming career,
I missed out on Athens 5.03 of a second and that my bathers split in the race
and it was, like, really, really traumatising.
It took me a long time to kind of overcome it and work through it.
But I look at that moment as a catalyst in my career and my life.
Because it made, I could, it was like a bit of a sliding doors moment.
I could have decided that this, this is, has been really traumatic and horrific
and I'm not going to make the team and I'm going to let this define who I am.
Or I'm going to be a bit of a detective and go, all right, well,
that happened to me, but what, how can I move through and let
that just be a blip in my life?
And it could never be a blip.
I guess, because it was, it's like changed me as a human, but it was,
it no longer has an emotional charge.
And I just, you know, I was a swimming teacher for a really long time and I would love
when the little kids would dive down into the water and, you know,
or cover themselves in water and blow bubbles and jump up and be like, see teacher,
Cause they'd never know your name.
And that's, I get that face from adults and kids when I talk about like the three
elements of self-belief or that you, you know, we, I did a talk for swimming
Victoria a couple of weeks ago and they were like, how do you, um, how do you
visualize like your, um, your race and stuff?
And I, we all, everyone's threw up in the room and I was like, imagine you're
behind the blocks and because people know how to feel that, that visceral
experience, they can take themselves there.
And so much of the work that I did as an athlete was completely transferable and
to the work that I do now.
So we do heaps of visualization and heaps of, you know, when I was an athlete,
my room was covered in motivational quotes and the times that I had to swim,
I would write a big black text or like a three pieces of paper.
And, um, I would go and swim those exact times down to the millisecond because I
was looking at the times all the time, you know, and I was making it my reality.
And I think I didn't, I didn't know that I was doing that until I learned about
how the brain works and.
Um, the athletes are probably doing that now, but they don't realize they're doing
Like, I think there's so much more common, so many deeper conversations we could
have around, um, the, how you can make your dreams, your reality through your
mind, as well as the embodiment while you're actually in the practice of doing
the sport that you love.
I wonder if that Athens moment that you touched on might have already answered
But when I'm asking everyone that I love.
Is what is your favorite failure?
Yeah, that was probably my favorite.
It was pretty bad.
I remember because I was a Paralympian too, that I, the bathers that I split, I, I, I
wasn't allowed to get a new pair because we weren't sponsored by the leading company that
sponsors, I won't say.
Um, and I'm just very, very grateful to the two women that, well, there was three women
particularly that got me through that moment.
Um, it was my mom.
And one of my closest friends, Ali and her mom was the master on the team and she knew
And so she got me a new pair, um, because that shouldn't have happened.
Like they was a fault in those, in that pair of togs.
Um, but yeah, I did a personal best.
So, I mean, that's good.
I got out to six minutes for the first time in the 400, but I didn't make the team.
So it was, it was, it was a bit of a bittersweet kind of situation.
What has been the highlight of your career today?
You know, it's funny.
I, I think probably winning the gold, I want to say winning the gold medal for Australia
was pretty amazing.
Um, but I also think back to the moment that the little girl who believed that disability
was bad, um, and went to her first year nationals and, you know, won five gold medals.
And, um, you know, my second year nationals, I won 12.
And, you know, like I was a force to be reckoned with, um, but, you know, I think those moments
are more special than any of the other stuff because it, it sent me on a path that I didn't
know I was capable of.
And that was, that's powerful for me.
It's quite beautiful.
Like sport can obviously cause a lot of.
Heartache and trauma and things, but it can also be quite a beautiful healing thing.
And it sounds like that, even as a young person was quite a healing thing for you, those achievements.
It was, yeah, absolutely.
And I, and I talk a lot about, you know, one of the most powerful parts of that first competition
away from home from my parents was I learned to tie my shoelaces myself at 11, you know,
cause it was hard for me to put shoes on and off.
And, um, you know, when I, when I first started rugby, my body had deteriorated.
A lot, so I wasn't really able to walk much anymore and the boys taught me how to transfer
in and out of my car without having to walk much.
And so, um, I, because when you're born with a disability, you don't go through any of
You have to work it out yourself.
Like if you have an accident and you go through rehab and they teach you how to do those things.
But yeah, when you're born, it's kind of like you're on your, you're not on your own cause
you have therapy and stuff, but you don't really learn that kind of thing, those things.
So I think those.
Connections that I made with people that will be part of my life forever, uh, what I take away
more from anything than, you know, the sessions where my coach would be like, do eight, four
hundreds in a row and, you know, a hundred, a hundreds on the one 30 and all that kind
Like, you know, um, that's, that was a, a moment of true athleticism and stuff like
that, but that's, that kind of was nothing compared.
To who I became from the whole experience, looking ahead to the Paris Paralympics.
Do you have an athlete or athletes that you're excited to watch?
I always just want to watch the Steelers.
Like I am so, I'm so impressed with them and I love that there's three females on the team
now, like that just makes my heart burst with joy.
Um, the swimmers, I, I really, I've got a couple of swimmers that I kind of know a little
bit about, but I'm not really.
Kind of up with who's in the team, um, cause I'm such an old, old lady now, like a way.
People are like, oh, it's so weird.
But people were like, you're a Paralympian.
I was like, yeah, like 24 years ago.
I mean, I know you're never not a Paralympian once you're a Paralympian, but it was, it
was another lifetime.
Um, but yeah, I'll definitely be watching the Steelers.
I just, I would, if I was still able to play rugby, I would still be playing rugby because
yeah, but now I've got two beautiful titanium knees.
Not allowed to play high impact sports with, so, um, not allowed to play, but yeah, the
rugby is like always great to watch.
And, um, I actually caught up with a friend this week who didn't make the team.
And I, um, and I think one of the, one of the parts or one of the kind of things that
I'll be thinking about this time is for all the athletes that really tried their, their
hardest and didn't make it, you know, I send lots of love to them because it can be really
Um, headspace to be in, but yeah, I'll definitely be watching the boys.
Hopefully I can't say the boys anymore.
I'll be watching the gang, the Steelers.
How good is that?
The three women there.
Thank you so much Elle for your time today and for your vulnerability.
It's, it's been a real pleasure to sit down and chat, um, and hear more about your story.
I've, I've really enjoyed it.
So thank you so much.
Thanks so much for having me.
Thanks so much for listening.
If you got something out of this episode, I would absolutely love it.
If you could send it on to one person who you think might enjoy it.
Otherwise subscribe, give us a review and make sure you follow us on Instagram at the
female athlete project to stay up to date with podcast episodes, merch drops, and of
course, news and stories about epic female athletes.