Timely change
Aussie-born gymnast Brown books Paris ticket after NZ switch
MELBOURNE: After mounting Commonwealth Games podiums for Australia, gymnast Georgiarose Brown will achieve a long-awaited Olympic dream in a New Zealand leotard in Paris having thrilled her Kiwi mum with a successful late-career switch.
Born in Australia’s eastern Queensland state and based in Melbourne, Brown will compete for New Zealand in the all-around competition at the age of 29 after topping the rankings on the uneven bars at recent World Cup qualifying events.
Brown, who won three Commonwealth
Games medals from 2014-18, decided to switch allegiance last year and, with the blessing of Gymnastics Australia, it was approved by the International Olympic Committee in January.
The move triggered a new lease of life for a gymnast who had long craved an Olympic tracksuit but never managed to qualify.
“The New Zealand team has just been so welcoming. I’ve had the most incredible experience for the first four months of this year,” she told reporters yesterday after being confirmed on the
Olympic team.
“It’s been a whirlwind, but it’s been insane and it’s actually – probably to this date – the highlight of my career.”
Australia and New Zealand athletes once represented the same Australasia team at the Olympics until competing under their own flags from the 1920 Games in Antwerp.
The trans-tasman nations have long enjoyed their rivalry in international sport, particularly in rugby and cricket, while occasionally lamenting the athletes who cross “the ditch” to represent the other side.
Brown’s mother, who hails from Palmerston North, a sleepy city in New Zealand’s North Island, was over the moon.
“She was like, ‘This is awesome. This is actually awesome.’”
Retaining Australia-based coaches and bolstered by staff from New Zealand Gymnastics, Brown will have fans from both nations cheering her in Paris.
At almost 30-years-old and 1.73m in height, she will stand out as one of the tallest and most seasoned competitors in women’s artistic gymnastics.