Australian sprinter’s plea before the Paris Olympics: It’s a fight
This week, an Australian athlete qualified for her first Olympics. However, she is facing financial difficulties and has asked the public to assist cover her expenses.
Alanah Yukich, 26, competed in five different countries in 16 days to clinch her Olympic spot and admits she is in debt as a result of juggling her objectives with daily life expenses.
“This is my first year as a professional, and it has been difficult. “I worked for a while but had to quit in January because training was so intense,” the 400-meter hurdler told Yahoo News. “Savings wise, it’s been massively chipping into that and everything has been out of pocket.”
Yukich has accumulated almost $4000 in debt in just two months and has set up a GoFundMe campaign to cover some of her expenses.
“I have a lot of debt that I still have to pay off, and it’s hard,” she told Yahoo, adding on the fundraising website that ‘any support you can provide, no matter the amount, would mean the world to me’.
Yukich, raised in the remote outback town of Gingin in Western Australia, has resided in the US for the previous six years and got financial aid from the University of Texas through a scholarship.
After graduation, she had to make the difficult decision of whether to stay in the United States, where she has an established coach and routine, or to return to Australia, where she had “more ties” but would eventually dismantle many of the components that had allowed her to advance in her career over the last few years.
“I’d be isolated at home… “I wanted to give it my all, rather than going in half-hearted and later wondering ‘what if’,” she explained.
Many athletes make this decision, with what is great for their career producing “instability” un other areas of their lives. Yukich’s decision paid off, as he qualified for the Olympic team in remarkable way last month.
A week before the qualification deadline, she competed in the 400m hurdles in three countries over three days, clocking three times under 56 seconds, a level she had not reached in a month. Yukich is one of 75 athletes in the Australian athletics team, the largest Australian athletics team to compete in an Olympics.
Athletics Australia (AA) pays for eligible competitors’ training and travel during the Olympics, however this subsidy ends after the games, and a lack of consistent revenue can put athletes in jeopardy.
“For now, my main goal, I think, is setting a personal best, and, you know, at the end of the day, it’s the best thing you can really do,” Yukich said of her Olympic goals.
The Paris Olympics begin on July 26, with more than 460 Australian competitors prepared to compete in 33 sports.
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