Real-life reads
Taking the plunge: Rebecca’s battle for bronze; High tea and hope: Mums living with loss
When Rebecca Dubber returned home from the 2016 Paralympic Games, she tucked her bronze medal safely away in a cabinet. But almost every day, she still finds herself opening the drawer – just to check it’s still there and that her success was real.
It still feels like a dream for the 23-year-old swimmer, who came third in the women’s 100m backstroke. But the road to Rio de Janeiro was not an easy path for Rebecca, who was born with a rare condition called lumbar sacral agenesis, which
affected the development of her spine and left her struggling to walk.
However, she’s never let the congenital disorder stop her. “I started learning to swim when I was three or four,” tells Rebecca. “I always remember going to the beach and loving the water.”
In 2008, at the tender age of 14, she qualified for the Paralympic trials. Back then, she was improving every time she swam and was almost guaranteed a spot on the team, but the young teen was overwhelmed by the pressure and failed to make it in the moment when it mattered the most.
“Being told that I wasn’t going to Beijing was a wakeup call,” the swimming star recalls. “That’s when I started taking things a little more seriously. I started training a little bit harder and then I finally made it to London.”
But Rebecca had been struggling with pain in her arms all year. Though she tried to swim through it, it affected her performance at the 2012
Paralympics
and she returned home frustrated, without a medal.
“That was disheartening,” she says. “I was being told by people that it was all in my head and that I needed to toughen up.”
But four months after the Games, the pain got worse and she had some X-rays, which revealed small bits of bone and cartilage floating in her elbow joints.
Eyeon the prize
The surgery that followed meant Rebecca was benched for the 2013 swimming season. She tells, “The early conversations we were having with doctors were that if the operations didn’t go well, I would lose my ability to swim at that level.”
The easy option would have been to hang up her cap and goggles, but Rebecca knew that her Paralympic loss wasn’t how she wanted to end her swimming career. “I had already set my sights on Rio from the moment I finished in London,” she explains. “I wasn’t going to let this surgery stop me.”
After the bone was removed, Rebecca was back in the pool as soon as she could, more determined than ever to make it to Brazil. And finally, after years of hard work, she got to taste Paralympic glory, placing third. Rebecca grins, “It was a very relieving moment to touch the wall, look up and see that I’d done what I came here to do.”
When asked about the details of the day, Rebecca shakes her head, laughing that no matter how hard she tries to remember, it’s all just a blur. But there is one thing she does recall clearly – the faces of her family when she claimed her bronze medal.
“The first thing I did was look up into the stands. I saw my mum and dad looking so excited. It was an awesome moment. I also remember my coach jumping up and down because it was his first Olympic win too.”
All the struggles and
Never give up: The Paralympian has now set her sights on the Queensland State Championship in December.
setbacks became worth it in that moment, however this year, Rebecca is taking some time off swimming competitively to go back to the Auckland University of Technology to continue her Bachelor of Communication Studies.
But this water baby won’t stay away from the pool for very long. She is still training and getting ready to compete in December’s Queensland State Championship. “I feel like I’ve struggled a little bit since Rio to get back to where I was,” she confesses. “So I’m really just focusing on getting slowly back to being the best athlete I can be.”
This May, she will also be mentoring young aspiring swimmers at the Jetstar Super Swim Squad Camp, an Auckland training event for high-performing swimmers aged between seven and 12 years old. Rebecca explains, “I feel like I have this wealth of knowledge from what I’ve had to overcome and that I know what it takes. If I can pass it on to those kids, then hopefully it will inspire them to go on and do the same.”
Whether it’s competing at the Paralympics or teaching young children about water safety, Rebecca will always be drawn to the pool.
“Someone asked me once, ‘What do you see your future looking like post-swimming?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think there will ever be a life without swimming for me!’”