An Olympic dream is pushing Drouin gymnast Alice Johnson to new heights.
Alice, who celebrated her 11th birthday last week, currently undertakes high performance gymnastic training in Melbourne. She joins seven sessions per week split over five days, totalling 25 hours.
The St Joseph's Primary School grade six student is currently putting in extra effort leading into the state trials this month. The trails, held over three consecutive weekends, will determine the eight-person squad to represent Victoria at the Australian Championships in Queensland.
Alice says consistency will be key across the three weekends which falls at the start of her first competition season in two years.
Believing her strength is key, Alice picked bars as her favourite of the four apparatus.
"I love to swing. It just feels nice being in the air and on the bar."
Despite being one of the youngest in her development squad, which ranks just one step below the international squad, Alice doesn't shy away from achieving big skills. In fact, mastering these difficult skills along with competing and setting new goals are amongst her favourite parts of gymnastics.
She also prefers skills travelling backwards, despite most finding these scarier.
Her training currently includes going through competition routines to polish, ballet classes for posture and a lot of strength work across upper, middle and lower body. It isn't unusual to see gymnastics wearing weight vests to climb up rope ladders without using their legs.
Whilst COVID lockdowns impacted all gymnasts, Alice has worked hard on strength and skills as she returns to regular training.
Having achieved her level eight makes Alice eligible for the Australian Championships. And making the state team puts her one step closer to her Olympic dream.
"Just getting to the Olympics," says Alice of her aims. "It's a very big achievement."
Her idol is Emily Whitehead who competed at the Tokyo Olympics and won two bronze medals at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Whitehead trains at the same facility in Melbourne as Alice, allowing the youngster an insight into how much work is required to make the top level. She was enjoyed a one-on-one training session with Whitehead after winning a lockdown competition.
Whilst she will be too young for the next Olympics, Alice is dreaming of swinging on the bars at the 2028 event in Los Angeles.