2012 Olympics with Ella Nicholas Canoe slalom athlete

Ella Nicholas is a 21-year-old top canoe slalom athlete who is heading to the London Olympics this year. She is writing a monthly column for The Weekend Sun on her progress.

My father's family is from the Cook Islands and while I live in New Zealand, I race for the Cook Islands.

I think it is important to see where people's family come from, to be able to see what truly contributes to making them who they are.

My ‘Nani' (grandmother on my father's side) was born on the small paradise island of Aitutaki. My father was born in Rarotonga where he and his siblings grew up in a one-room dwelling with a gravel floor. My mother's family were farmers in Palmerston North, where my grandfather juggled milking cows with playing squash for New Zealand.

I was born in Tauranga Hospital in December 1990 to two loving parents. I have an older brother and younger sister who both also study medicine and kayak.

I have always loved sports. In primary school, I dabbled in soccer, basketball, netball, tennis, swimming and when I moved on to college I added kayaking, water polo, canoe polo, volleyball and more. Kayaking and basketball were always my favourites and I played representative basketball from under 12s through to under 18s and recently joint a club team in Dunedin.
Kayaking gradually became my first priority as I moved through my college years. The excitement of white water, mixed with the opportunities for international travel made it all too appealing.

Now I know I am competing at the Olympics, I have withdrawn from studying medicine at Otago University for the year to concentrate on training fulltime and give myself the best opportunity for a good result.

I had a good start to my Olympic build up last weekend, finishing third at the New Zealand Open. Held on the white water course at Mangahao near Palmerston North, this International Canoe Federation ranking race featured some of the world's top ranked slalom athletes across 10 different nations.

After a solid semi-final run that placed me in the top 10 final, I improved to put down a faster time with less penalties and posted a career-best result, ahead of five paddlers of higher international ranking.

I'm really happy with what I achieved at this race. I've been having some help with my race preparation from a sports psychologist and so the mental aspect of my paddling was my main focus for this race, not the outcome. This ended up paying off with a medal, which was an extra bonus.

Next on the agenda is six weeks paddling in Australia. During this stint, there are another two ICF races – the Australian Open (February10-12) and the Oceania Championships (Febuary 24-26) plus a large block of time on the white water.

I still have a lot of work to do in my Olympic build up. I am really excited to head to Australia this week to continue my training on the Sydney 2000 Olympic course. I'm looking forward to getting into a good routine of hard white water training and hopefully have some more good results.

Many top international paddlers come to Australia during their winter for some off-season training, so the competition at these races is really tough. It is sometimes scary training amongst the best in the world, but I learn so much just from watching them.

For full results visit www.slalomnz.org.nz
To follow Ella visit www.ellanicholas.com or Facebook ‘Ella Nicholas' – athlete.