Melissa Wu Into the blue

As Melissa Wu limbers up for her fourth Olympic Games, she is barely recognisable as the tiny 13year-old diving prodigy who burst into our national consciousness with a stunning silver medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

“I am definitely a very different competitor,” says Melissa, now 29. “Obviously I have a lot more knowledge and experience, but I have also worked very hard on my self-confidence and self-belief.”

Now an Australian diving team veteran, Melissa hopes to use her experience to mentor others. It is a support system she lacked as a young diver, instead feeling bullied and resented.

“I remember how I felt at that age and how much I struggled in that high performance squad,” she tells The Weekly. “It was a tough time, and I don’t want the young athletes to feel that way. I want them to know they have someone they can go to.”

Melissa started diving at the age of 10 after being dragged to the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre to watch her sister swimming. She was captivated by the divers tumbling from adjacent platforms. “I just fell in love with it,” she says. Within five years, she’d won silver at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, the 2007 World Aquatics Championships and the 2008 Olympics. But the joy went out of diving for Melissa.

“I had this feeling that I wasn’t what an athlete should be,” she has since said about her battle with depression in the wake of Beijing. “You’re meant to be doing everything to better yourself, not hating yourself. You look at other athletes and they look strong and confident. I was feeling the opposite.”

Melissa has worked with psychologists to improve her mental game, and she heads to Tokyo a stronger competitor than the little girl who first wowed Australia back in 2006. Yet there is one aspect of her youthful mindset that she misses.

“There was that feeling of not having any pressure on me,” she says. “I could just focus on diving.There is so much I could learn from that little girl.”