BATTLING TO KEEP

Chasing an Olympic diving medal isn’t something you can do by training part-time - but it also doesn’t pay the bills so Sam Fricker turned to social media to help keep his dream alive.

Fricker, 21, is aiming to compete in the platform and springboard events at

Paris, which means he is training five to six days a week and it’s impossible to juggle a job.

So Fricker turned to social media and quickly became an influencer.

He has 4.33 million subscribers on YouTube, 1.9M followers on Tik Tok and 120K on Instagram.

“I find when I’m doing an event, my content doubles,” Fricker said.

“I just make content around what I’m doing so I don’t find it too hard to go out and make content because I just document what I’m doing anyway.

“It gives a different perspective because when we are up there on the platform, it goes so fast. There is a lot you don’t see.”

Sprint kayaker Alyce Wood says a funding “game changer” is the reason she will line up for her third Olympics in Paris after having had a daughter, Florence, with husband and two-time Olympian Jordan Wood, since the Tokyo Games.

The pair had always planned to have a family after Tokyo and while Jordan has now retired from competition, becoming a three-time Olympian remained a goal for Alyce, who received tremendous

Australia’s Olympic team has its millionaires … and the GoFundMe kid. When Tweed Heads 16-year-old Jeff Dunne found out he would be the first male breakdancer to represent Australia in the new Olympic sport, his family were overjoyed.

Then the reality hit that Games selection meant a seat on a plane, accommodation at the village, some nice gear, a couple of tickets … and support from her sport before, during and after her pregnancy to achieve her dream.

It’s something that wouldn’t have been able to occur in the past.

“The way the funding system is structured now is a lot more consistent as well,” Wood said.

“Our sport supported me through my pregnancy rather than leaving me, which is a game changer. If I didn’t have that financial support from my sport through that period, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.” that’s about it. There was much heavy lifting to do.

“The smaller sports barely get any funding so we had a lot of work to do,’’ Jeff’s mother, Rhonnda, said. “He needs to go overseas and be on the world stage.’’

A GoFundMe page was swiftly organised and at the time of writing it had $18,718 of a target of $50,000 needed to have the Grade 11 student primed for Paris.

Dunne said on the GoFundMe page that to give himself the best shot in Paris, he needed to compete in Japan, Birmingham and Italy to hone his skills.