Kiana Elliott Interview
It's time for your first taste of weightlifting on the show today as we speak with Australian Olympian Kiana Elliott about her time at the Olympics and her amazing career that lead her to Tokyo. We learn from Kiana just how a promising gymnastics career turned into an even more promising weightlifting career and just how quickly she was able to take to the sport and turn that into representing Australia at international competitions. We also learn how she was able to overcome some very low lows after narrowly missing out on the Rio Olympics, and turn that into an amazing competition at the Tokyo Games. Added to this we learn more about arm wrestling random athletes in the Olympic Village and discovering just why TikTok might not be on the cards for her moving forward. It's another fun and amazing chat that you simply won't want to miss!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
BEN WATERWORTH: It is Off The Podium, an Olympics podcast coming to you once again for another interview episode. And we're so excited today for our guest, Kiana Elliott, an Olympic weightlifter just recently returned from Tokyo. And our very first taste at the sport of weightlifting. We get so exciting when we can chat to a new sport, an athlete from a new sport on this show. And today is obviously one of those days. And a fascinating chat here with Kiana. Very, very fascinating. We learn how she went from gymnastics to competing at the Olympics in weightlifting. There's actually more of a connection than you can actually imagine right now. And a very inspirational story, very close to representing Australia at the Rio Olympics and narrowly missed out and turning that disappointment from some very low lows in that period around 2016, 2017 until some very high highs competing in Tokyo and some very fascinating insight into the qualification process of both Olympics and how the whole COVID pandemic affected that chance of going to the Olympics and everything else in between. It really is a fascinating chat, learning a little bit more or two about the sport of weightlifting here as well. It is a chat that I know you are going to enjoy, and you're gonna hear that right now, our chat with Olympic weightlifter, Kiana Elliott.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's always exciting on Off The Podium when we're able to talk to an athlete from a sport we have never covered before. And today is one of those days, we're gonna learn a little bit more about the sport of weightlifting today with a recently returned Olympian from Tokyo. And a very interesting journey in how she got into the sport. And I'm very intrigued to find out more about this and everything else about her time in Tokyo. And outside of that, everything else that she's up to, it's a pleasure to welcome to the show Kiana Elliott. Kiana, first of all, welcome to Off The Podium. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Thank you so much for having me. It's cool to be here.
BEN WATERWORTH: I, as I said, excited to learn about weightlifting and excited to learn about your journey to get there because, I mean, look, I watch weightlifting at the Olympics, and I just like, holy crap, if there's a sport that I think I could never remotely even do, it's weightlifting. I can barely lift a chair, let alone the amount of weight. I mean, are you just, are you constantly always asked by your friends and family, like if there's something heavy to carry? You're like, hey, come on, Kiana, you do this for a living. Can you come carry this bag to the car for me or something like that?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, totally. That happens so often. And the joke is I'm a weightlifter, not a weight carrier. We pick it up and we put it down and sit down for a couple of minutes, and break.
BEN WATERWORTH: So don't ask weightlifters to carry things, right? Like this is, you know, stop doing it, people.
KIANA ELLIOTT: No, no, there's a different sport. Different sport, it's called strongman. They actually pick up and carry stuff and put things on. They're the manual labour people.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, you're just, you're a couple of seconds and you're done. That's it, that's it, that's it, right? It's kind of, it's like asking an aerial skier to do more than, you know, five seconds worth of work, right? They're doing the flips and their landing, that's done.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Exactly the same with weightlifter.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly, often compared, aerial skiing and weightlifting.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh, totally, totally, carry over.
BEN WATERWORTH: Very connected, essentially, which is, on that page, though, you want to talk about sort of random sports that aren't connected. Gymnastics and weightlifting, you're a gymnast where you're not, how on earth do you end up competing for Australia at the Olympics in weightlifting, when the goal was to be a gymnast doing the same? I mean, that is a, that's a story in itself that I want to hear.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, sure. I mean, you talk about connected, but not connected. If you take a handstand, and you turn it around the other way, and you put a barbell on top, that's weightlifting.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well done, I like that.
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's a carry over, perhaps more so, than aerial skiing and weightlifting. Let's put it that way. Gymnastics is a starter for many sports. I was young, and I picked out having talent at a young age. I was in grade one at school, and we had kinder gym basically come through and do PE for us. And I got sent home with a flyer, and I'm not sure whether that coach actually contacted my parents as well, and said, this kid needs to come down and do this gymnastics thing. And so I went down and started, and I just wanted to be in the full fun group, and not do anything seriously. But no, the coach pushed me, and so I was allowed to spend one school term in the fun group. And then I got put in the competitive group, with a bunch of like six, seven-year-olds. And that quickly turned into more and more competitions, and eventually turned into transitioning into what they call the elite stream, which meant for me changing gyms and training more, and training under Chinese coaches with military background. Did that for a few years. Got a bit broken doing that. And that's what ultimately led me to calling it on gymnastics was, I just didn't think I could do another rehab. So yeah, I called it when I was about 14 and retired. I say retired, I was 14-year-old, but it felt like retirement. That whole Kiana Elliott, the gymnast, was my identity at that age. And we trained 32 and a half hours a week on top of school. We spent more time at the gym than we did at school, and then we did at home. It was all I did. So the most exciting thing for me as a 14-year-old was having a little bit of independence and catching the train to and from school was so cool and so liberating and yeah. So it was just this massive, massive identity shift. Well, it was really a crisis. And then over the next year and a half, I just tried to, I played around with a couple of things, you know, trying to do physical activity for health and for fitness and also for my happiness. Like I tried, you know, going for runs and very quickly realised that wasn't very much fun at all. And so I couldn't really commit to it. I wasn't able to like consistently, quote unquote, train. And I just felt like I was torturing myself. So it didn't last. I played around with a couple of other sports, played social basketball at school and sucked ridiculously, but it was good fun. And I was just in a local gym trying to do something to keep myself fit. And that's when I got the chance to pick up a barbell and got introduced to barbell movements. I'd never pictured myself doing weightlifting. I don't think any, maybe a few more do now, but as a 15 year old girl, I just didn't really know that weightlifting was a thing that I could do. I think everyone had sort of a mental image in their head of, you know, the typical weightlifter. I don't know why they always zoom in on the weightlifter's face, but with the bar on their shoulders and their huffing and puffing and straining and the veins are popping out, and they're trying to put it over their head. And for the women's side, I think they always used to publicise the supers because they lift the most weight. At least that's the sort of mental image I had in my head at 15. I didn't really know it as a sport I could do. I was just trying to outlift the other girls in the gym. Then the opportunity came up to do a workshop just based on weight lifting. I begged my mum to let me do it, and she also bought me shoes. I was good at begging. And as a result of that workshop, the lady that ran the workshop told me that the weights I had lifted on that day could have actually meddled me at the junior youth on the 17 level within the state. She said, maybe you should consider this as something you might want to pursue. Do you want to? There's a couple of coaches here and here, and I will let me know what you might want to do, and I'll come along and introduce you. So I went along on a Sunday, and my mum was really pissed off because we couldn't find the place. And I met this coach and got some weightlifting coaching, and he told me to come back the next day. And then the next day, and then by the end of that week, on the Friday, I jumped in a club competition. So just within the same gym and just did the lifts that Kiana did in an official competition. And I think a month on from that, I competed in a more proper competition and lifted a total that put me on an Australian team as an under 17 athlete. And that, it happened so quickly.
BEN WATERWORTH: It was in a month representing Australia. That's insane.
KIANA ELLIOTT: The first, almost the first real comp I did, I qualified. It's, I don't know whether the, the standard was at a level that it was attainable for me in that timeframe.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's crazy to think that that can happen so quickly. Cause I mean, you're mentioning about sort of the, the levels you were competing for gymnastics and training there. Cause it kind of all of a sudden made you think that, shit, I should have started this like five years ago. Who knows where I could have been right now.
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's different. Hey, right. So gymnastics, you train these hours upon hours. And they really drill into you that hard work and a lot of hard work at a young age will reap the rewards in the future. So we were all working towards the year we turned 16, which was the year you'd turn into the senior age group in gymnastics. So for me, that would have been 2013. So even from the age of six, I knew that I was too young for London and Rio would be my Olympic games. And that's how they drew you for it. And so you know, it's a long game. And I didn't know it would be quick or anything in weightlifting. I was sort of very, I didn't go into weightlifting going, right, I'm gonna go to the Olympics in weightlifting. I was, I'm doing this for fun. It was a self-protection mechanism. I felt like I'd had the dream to get out from underneath me in gymnastics. So I didn't want to invest fully in it. And weightlifting, yeah, it happened so quickly. And you make gains so quickly as a new weightlifter, particularly if you have a physical affinity for the sport and you have physical awareness. It's the neurological adaptations of the movement that mean you can progress 10, 20 kilos stupidly quickly. And then about three issues in for me, four years in, you hit like this wall. And then every single kilo, you're like, oh, how did I do that? And yeah, sure, there are a few other factors involved, but the start of weightlifting is just, for me, it was just a whirlwind.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which going back to your point about in gymnastics, where you're kind of reaching that level where Rio is gonna be my Olympics on that progression scale, just on the Olympics in general, was that something when you were younger, gymnastics or other sports you were competing was sort of the Olympics always something that you strive towards, and it was just gymnastics that you fell into, or was it more of a, I'm a gymnast, the Olympics is the top goal, that's what I'm aiming for?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I was only good at gymnastics. I never played catch as a kid, so if you throw something at me, I'll run the other way. And if I throw something at you, it won't go anywhere near you. That's the level of my hand-eye coordination and athleticism towards other sports. Gymnastics, it was from such a young age, I think they try and pick out the kids with the physical affinity, the physical characteristics that suit the sport. And then to some extent, I think you can judge kids that young on their mentality and whether they can take it, because you're so young, it's can you take instruction? Are you willing to do a bit of work? And so the seed was planted from such a young age. I was six years old when I first went to the Australian Institute of Sport and basically did a selection camp for, it was called Towards London 2012, but there were kids that were old enough for London and then there were kids that were a bit younger. So that was when, you know, it was sort of became clear that Rio was the Olympic Games that you'd be looking at, not London. And so that was, I was offered to go and train at AIS when I was six years old. It was for a three month trial and my parents were looking at moving. And then I think there was some discussion between the coaches and, well, my coach and my parents, it basically was along the lines of, if they decide they don't like you after three months, they're just gonna send you home. Like, it might be the end of it. So we ended up making the call, well, it wasn't my call, it was my parents call, not to go to that trial and just keep doing gymnastics. But the elite gymnastics at that time was separated into the national stream and the elite stream. And so within a few years, our coach was pushing myself and another couple of girls to try and do this elite process and try and learn different skills. And it's a completely different pathway. So yeah, it was drilled in from such a young age and it was always the end game.
BEN WATERWORTH: Cause I can't imagine it's six years old when that's kind of something that it's true. Like, I didn't know what I was doing at six. Like, I mean, I couldn't even tell you right now what I was doing at the age of six, probably what Jurassic Park was released that year. I think the poster is behind me. As you can tell, I was excited to say that. Like, I can't imagine what it's like to be sort of drilled into at that age that this is the progression that you have. And then when you sort of say at 14, you have to retire like it, to many hearing that's like, wow, okay, that's young, but you're doing for eight years at that point, more than half your life, that's all you know. So it's kind of, wow.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Come to where I am now, I've done gymnastics for eight years, and then I've done weightlifting for eight years. It's 16 years of my life for one Olympic Games.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Which, I mean, what's to say with the next eight years, again, aerial skiing, you know, just saying, like, I mean.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh my gosh. Aerial awareness was not my strong point.
BEN WATERWORTH: Not quite on that level. When you first then do weightlifting, outside of the obvious of, you've got to lift a weight and hold it. Like, what are some of the other aspects that you found challenging, I guess, kind of on the technical aspect of the sport? Because it's a lot more technical than people give it credit for weightlifting, isn't it?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, sure. You move an object from A to B, the most efficient way to do that in terms of physics is to go in a straight line. But you work with the biomechanics of the human body, you can't move an object in a perfectly straight line. If you're going to leverage it well, you can move a light object in a straight line easy. So you become aware of this concept very early on that the closer the barbell is to your centre of gravity, the lighter it is. To demonstrate that, like you imagine holding a two-litre thing of milk at arm's length and holding it there for ages. But if I put that, I have the mobility to put that directly above my head, it can balance there quite happily. Just fundamental concepts of how the sport works. It's really weird as a gymnast, you jump and you rebound so much. Weightlifting is all about landing flat, solid. We jump, but we almost jump down. And so it was a landing, it's a transition to learning to land on my heels, as opposed to being so toe focused. It was almost like I did a bit of diving after gymnastics and the concept of learning how to land on your head was just terrifying, because you don't do that in gymnastics, it means death, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: And weightlifting too, I hope you're not landing things on your head as well, also probably.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, no, that would be bad.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which it's fascinating to think about how something so simple as landing and feet movement can be correlated between the two sports. And then just as you mentioned, the simple biomechanics of a sport and just little things like that, because that's what's really interesting about weightlifting, that again, armchair critic like me is just watching, going, oh, they're just lifting heavy shit, that's easy. But it's not, because the simple thing like you saying, well, putting your hands, centre of gravity makes it light, like it's all about that lighter mentality than you're lifting the same weight. So, I mean, can you relate the mental aspect of gymnastics across to, I guess, weightlifting as well, and that fact that you want to land a trick and kind of land that to get over that mental aspect, and then this time around, it's crossing that barrier of lifting something heavier or I guess getting that technique right to lift it heavier along the way.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, it's interesting, I've been thinking about some weightlifting in competition versus other sports in competition. If you think about gymnastics, you have skills where you use measured power. You will know that a certain amount of power in a jump through your hips and in rotation will land you a somersault on your feet on a 10-centimetre beam. Over-rotate it with the excitement? Not good, you step deduction. Under-rotate it, you step deduction, or you fall off the beam, like if you go crooked. Weight lifting, there's still a technical aspect. You can over-pull the bar and end up flying behind you. You can be slightly out of position and the bar swings out in front of you, and it lands well in front of you. But there's definitely an aspect of technical execution, but you're harnessing your absolute effort in one minute, one really short moment, and that's the difference. I don't repeat my one RMs, my one rep maximums in training for practice. In gymnastics, the way we trained was we did a certain number of repetitions of our competition routine. Each day in training, twice a day, we'd do 10 repetitions of our being routine. We'd try and make it perfect. Weightlifting, I snatched 101 kilos at the Olympic Games. The last time I snatched something comparable was February of 2020. So over a year beforehand, I snatched 100. It's different preparation and a different goal and outcome in competition situation.
BEN WATERWORTH: And is that so you don't peak early? Like you don't want to all of a sudden go into an Olympics, going, well, I'm lifting 105, so I've got this. And then all of a sudden come Olympic competition, you're struggling to lift over 100?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I've always been a competition lifter. You use the adrenaline, you use the excitement, you use the environment to give you more energy to perform on the day. You hear about these stories of mothers lifting cars off their babies when there's an accident. Adrenaline is a powerful thing. If I were lifting 105s in training, I'd be like, damn, we're going to have a good comp. Your baseline strength will have a massive impact on what you're capable of on competition day, but your ability to execute that under pressure, that makes the best lifters, whether or not it's what you've done before.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, what is that feeling like when a month or so in, you're being selected for an Australian side, and then you go to that competition, you're wearing the green and gold, you're representing Australia. I mean, this journey is just all of a sudden just taken such a quick path, because you've obviously always aspired to represent Australia in one sport, and all of a sudden you're here. I mean, do you feel a bit like a fish out of water, or do you feel like, well, this is my destiny? I was always destined to represent Australia somewhere. It just doesn't happen to be in the sport that I initially thought it would be.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I felt ridiculously like a fish out of water at my first international competition. I was such a shy kid, and I just did not have the skills to interact in a foreign environment with different people. And I was terrified at the competition as well. It was, yeah, it didn't really feel like I'm, and I'm meant to be here moment. It was really scary at first, but the desire then to try and do better at the next one was quite powerful. It is to try and conquer that difficult situation, to try and do really well in such a challenging situation. It's been a driver.
BEN WATERWORTH: And what was the first event then that you was at, what tournament was that? A junior world championship, sort of like a Pacific championship? What was that first competition you were at?
KIANA ELLIOTT: It was the 2013 Commonwealth Youth Championships, which was combined with the junior and senior event. So we went away as a massive senior junior youth team. So we had like a separate manager for the kids that we had a curfew, and we still got to mingle and meet with the older athletes. Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: And how important is that then to kind of have that ability to mingle? Because I can imagine that you're so fresh at the sport, you're also quite young still. So I mean, is it kind of important to, I guess, mingle and get advice, maybe get a mentor, like have somebody kind of, you know, take you through, you know, the mentality and kind of just the competition format. You know, what's it like being at an event like that where you are mingling with other people from, you know, different age groups and also different countries?
KIANA ELLIOTT: The beauty about weightlifting is a local competition format is exactly the same as the Olympic Games competition format. Timing is the same. Everything is dependent on the weight of the barbell and that determines the order of the lifting. The key for me and what I've developed or what I've been able to develop and what my coaches actually helped me with is to feel comfortable and happy in myself. It's sort of weird when you talk about sport performance and feeling comfortable. And I think it comes down to confidence. I felt like such a fish out of water that I just felt out of place and you can't, weight lifting is a neurophysiological sport. It starts from your head. And if your head doesn't believe and your head is not comfortable, then you're not comfortable, but not confident, then you're sort of dooming yourself. Not dooming yourself, but you bootstrapping yourself from the start. So the big achievement for me was becoming a person that can go out there and feel like I belong there, feel like I belong in the training hall, that I can get the best out of myself in competition by using the support staff around me, so that I can feel like I'm placed to perform my best on the competition platform when it comes to that.
BEN WATERWORTH: And is that a gradual process, or do you kind of almost have a light bulb moment that you're at a competition and go, okay, no, I feel like I belong now?
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's about trusting the people around you and building that trust. And so the competitions that I've been to, I often have not, they're coaches that I don't know. They're coaches based in other states. So I need to be able to trust them. They need to be able to trust my lifting and to develop that sort of a rapport so I can get the best out of myself is the difficulty. It's not something that develops, it developed really slowly for me. I was a kid that was too scared to say hello. I didn't know that basic human interactions of like, you should say thank you when someone does something for you, basic stuff like that. I mean, every kid is taught to say thank you, but I didn't really understand the meaning of it until I got older, until I was sat down and told, this person is going out of their way for you. I appreciate it. So it was definitely a slow and gradual process. And despite it being so separate from the physical side of sport, I think it has such a massive bearing on how I can perform.
BEN WATERWORTH: You, a year after 2013, you went on to compete at the Nanjing Youth Olympics, the second ever Youth Olympics.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, that's right.
BEN WATERWORTH: I love hearing about the experiences from athletes who go on to compete at the, I guess, the full Olympics. How did that, I guess, place you, not only in the sport, you're competing at a much bigger international competition, you know, more countries, more competitors, but looking back on that, did that help prepare you for what you experienced at Tokyo, kind of giving you that taste of the Olympics a little bit more and kind of preparing you for what eventually would be your full Olympic debut seven years later?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, the Youth Olympics has been described as the closest event to an Olympic Games. That is not the Olympic Games. It's organised by the International Olympic Committee. We had... Donalds Maccas is a sponsor. We had a cafe in the village. Not in Tokyo, no, that was strange. I wasn't expecting that anyway. But it was the Village multi-sport event experience that was super cool, but that prepared me for what Olympic games might look like.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which it must be just fascinating then, kind of going back to ingrained in you that goal is Rio sort of in gymnastics, and there you are at a Youth Olympics, something that maybe would have been possible with gymnastics, of course, too. But to kind of just feature that, you're in China, you're competing against the best junior athletes in the world, you end up finishing seventh, which is no mean feat as well. I mean, kind of going back to that point about kind of belonging and that confidence and that sort of stuff. I mean, I can imagine at this point, you're placing seventh at a Youth Olympics. You must all of a sudden thinking like, okay, well, you know, this is going pretty okay. Still representing Australia. This journey is going all right. Weightlifting is doing all right for Kiana.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, so that Nanjing Youth Olympic Games was middle of my HSC, I think. It was between... Oh, God, I don't remember. It was between trials and the actual exams. So I was like, sweet, I can balance this. This is fine. I could go along, and I was just taking the opportunities as I came. I think I became more appreciative of what I was able to do. I may have placed seventh at that event, but I wasn't really in a position to challenge for anything. I remember going to my first Junior Worlds in 2014, and just, I think the three Australians that were on that team, we each tried not to come last in our session. And I think we succeeded. I remember I came second last. So it was a real sense of, do I really belong on the world weightlifting stage? We were sort of just here and having a play, and trying not to look rock bottom, and picking with one other person to have a bit of a game with it. And Youth Olympics, despite being such a big event, you sort of understand the selection process for it. And so it's not the same as a Youth World Championships. In the same way that an Olympic Games is not the same representation as a World Weightlifting Championships, it sort of works like that. But at the same time, it's still such a huge opportunity, and it's a different skill, and it's a different challenge to do well on such a big platform, is that you're living in a village with all these other people, Australian team, you have the support staffs provided by the AOC, you have all these opportunities around you. One of the big things about the Youth Olympic Games was them promoting us learning about other countries' cultures. So they had a lot of cultural tents in there, and you could go along, and there were activities and stuff, and we learned a little bit about culture. It was less about sporting performance and more about learning about the world, which was kind of cool. And when you have a bunch of under 18s, it was nice to take away from the pressure of competing, because being the second Youth Olympic Games, there wasn't that much of a precedence of how this was a stepping stone. You get what I mean?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, because I mean, I remember when they first started in 2010 and just kind of like everything around that, and then kind of each one sort of progressed along the way. And sort of we've had a few athletes on now who have experienced Youth Olympic Games. And it's, I mean, it's just such an interesting concept, which I'm really surprised it took so long to kind of do. Like it's sort of something the ISC sort of always wanted to do, but it sort of then it kind of came about. So it's fascinating learning that cultural aspect too, because that is a great way of sort of, I guess, experiencing that, because, you know, I can imagine that it's something that you don't really experience some of these cultures maybe of some of these countries that you, I mean, I'm never going to know about Burkina Faso or something, a place like that, which you're never going to come day to day life in Australia, are you?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Perhaps, no.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, no disrespect if you've got a friend from Burkina Faso, but like, I mean, you might have a best, I don't know, but first comes to the gate of my mind.
KIANA ELLIOTT: You can't emulate going and travelling to these countries, but certainly the stuff that's opened my eyes the most is travelling. I got the opportunity when I, between gymnastics and weightlifting to go to Tanzania. It was with the Youth Leadership Group based in Brisbane, and they take a bunch of young adults each year to do what they call a cultural immersion. So you do things like, for shy 15 year old me, this was terrifying, teaching in the local schools and teaching them some stuff about Australia and being hosted by local families. And then you do the stuff like going on safari, and we also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. But the forcing yourself to be out there in front of these different people, and also interacting with them on their day-to-day basis. Like I came back from that trip, and I just felt like my house was too big, my room was too big. It just felt so strange. I remember visiting a man who was just so, so stoked to have a white person, a mazulgu in his household. It was just such an eye-opening experience in that sense to teach you about the world. So bring it back to Youth Olympics. I loved that there was a cultural focus that it pulled away from performance. Cause at that age, it's not the Youth Olympics is not the be all and end all of sport. It is an experience.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which was there a particular culture or sort of one of the cultural tents you remember that you took most away from or kind of, you know, were most fascinated by?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Not really. I think I was still so shy. And I'm still like this now. Like I don't, I found it hard to initiate. There's always a big pin trading event at multi-sport games. You get your national federation pins or your national Olympic committee pins, and you go out and you meet people and you exchange them. So you end up with a whole massive collection of them. And I remember arm wrestling a girl from, I don't know what country, it was somewhere in the Middle East, and just you don't have that chance to experience that anywhere else.
BEN WATERWORTH: So is this arm wrestling for like a pin? Like basically, like give me a pin, I'll beat you at arm wrestling.
KIANA ELLIOTT: It was just like, for the hell of it. Like, it's sort of got a bit, you know with like these Olympic games, you spend all these multi-school games events, you spend the whole two and a half weeks in the village. And after you've competed, it's like, well, what do we do now?
BEN WATERWORTH: Arm wrestle random people.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Why not? Exactly. I think I did. I can't really remember. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
BEN WATERWORTH: You know, you kicked her ass.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I'm sure I did.
BEN WATERWORTH: Like she went back to the Middle East and was like, oh, I'm never messing with Australians in arm wrestling again. Like, you know, like, absolutely, I actually, it's one of these things that I do love hearing about the pin trading aspect because it's always fascinated me, you know, pin trading at these events and just learning about it. And like, is there an app? Is it true there's an app you can have to kind of like work out, like meet up with people for pins and that? Was that something you experienced?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I did a terrible job in Tokyo. So I spent so much, we obviously had to leave within 48 hours of our event. So I ended up, for me, meaning I had about 36 hours, a day and a half. So before the event, I was very hesitant about, you know, going to the gym, the village gym where all the countries would congregate, spending too much time in the dining hall around everyone. Because a positive COVID test would mean your Olympic game's gone. So caution was like the priority. And then in the 24, 36 hours afterwards, I was like, hey, do you want to change pins? And there was an app in Tokyo, but it was sort of, it was called PinQuest, and I never actually did it. But you had to answer these Olympics themed questions and you could get some exclusive pins for the people that actually bothered to go through and answer the questions. But I think you get a limited number of pins from the Australian Olympic Committee and the boxing kangaroo ones are really sought after. And so everyone wants, they're actually quite a decent commodity. So if you have a bit of time, if I'd had more time, you'd sort of play your game a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So you hold on to the valuable ones and you can get like, different countries will have like USA athletics or, and there are some which are cooler than others. So I think I've got a Brazil one with a tiger on it, some sort of cat or something on it. And that was a cool one that everyone picked because everyone wanted the boxing kangaroo.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: So there's sort of a hierarchy to it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Did you then just do the standard, like put them around the lanyard or do you kind of just keep them to add to something else later on that you'll work out?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I, you store them on your lanyard. That's the easiest way to do things. And then your lanyard gets too heavy if you trade enough pins, so you take them off and start over again. So in that 24, 36 hours, I just tried to swap my pins. That's all I did. I just stopped random people walking around that looked like they were perceptive to it. And be like, hey, do you want to trade a pin? It was good fun. Cause you have like these random conversations with like a boxer from Tunisia and her coach and how did you go? And it's just these random little corridor conversations that you have that are pretty cool.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's such a unique sort of, I guess, socializing aspect of it too. And then you've got people out there who are listening to this right now going like, oh, I've got to hit Kiana up. She's got some amount. I want that Brazilian tiger pin. Cause you know, it's often regarded as kind of what the unofficial sport of the Olympics, right? Because I mean, I remember back in Sydney when they used to do the, you know, 100, every hundred days they would do like an 800 days to go or 700 days to go and kind of, they would go like hotcakes because you'd snap them up and then they would become rare. I think I've got a 800 days to go or something like that for Sydney, which apparently are rare. So, you know, who knows? I become poor one day, I can sell that. I don't know. Yeah, it's just, it's interesting. I wonder if Brisbane have already started like the hell of many, you know, 10,000 days to go or something like that.
KIANA ELLIOTT: They'd have a pen already.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, it'd have to be some sort of something, right? Even though it's 11 years away, right? After Nanjing, how close were you to making Rio? You went to your first world championships the next year in 2015. You had the Oceania Championships in 2016. I mean, was Rio a realistic possibility that you could have qualified or did you just nearly qualify? How did all that play out?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I came super duper close to Rio. Like, ridiculously close. It sort of got to the end of 2015, and I got to go to my first senior world championships, which was being held in Houston. And I was competing up in the next class in the 69s, because I'd done nationals in the 69s, and they just kept me there for worlds because we had two 63s and there's a two per country limit per weight class. So I had a breakout at that 2015 nationals and did some, I clean a joke more than I did at this Olympic Games before. And so looking at Rio and looking at the qualification process, it started to look like a long shot. And then come sort of January 2016, we started to put the cogs in process to train more seriously for it. And I think that was the first time in weightlifting that I was like, right, let's put everything into this. Let's try and put everything in, because I don't know, I still hadn't really like gone in guns blazing. Before I retired from gymnastics, I spent about a year and a half recovering from one particular injury. And I thought about quitting the sport. I wasn't progressing. I couldn't do these skills anymore. And I came back, I'm like, no, no, no, I'm sure I can get more out of myself. I'm gonna do, I was the most disciplined I've ever been when I was 14. And I was so scared of doing that again for fear of missing out. So come January 2016, we started to put that process into place. And I trained my butt off for a maybe. It depended on the way the qualification process worked at that time. One female or one male would go to Rio for Australia. There were certain amount of competitions where you could post a qualifying total. And they did it as a percentage above a particular number for each weight class. So I knew that this person in this weight class had done X total. So I knew I needed a slightly higher percentage of that than in my class. So that worked out to a key loading number. And it came down to the last event. So the last event was the Oceania Championships. And the other aspect of this qualification process was that in order to qualify the one male, one female, Australia had to place high enough within the continental championships. So our male and female team had to place within the top four, top five to earn a quota spot. Within the same event, all of the Australians were competing against each other for that percentage over a particular number, so that they could get the spot. So there was this real contrasting goal to that competition. So we went over there as a full team, and I wasn't afforded my personal coach there. I was 18 and doing the biggest thing I'd ever done in my life, and I was terrified, but I'd also done so much work. I knew I'd put everything into it. So I went over there and I had to... I mentioned these two contrasting goals. We had to each make a total. There couldn't be any bombouts. So our team could place high enough so we could secure a spot to Rio. That was number one goal. Number two goal, and it had to come second. Each individual athlete was trying to reach their X number to be the person that was top ranked. So we watched the 48 to go, and I was wondering, well, what's the 48 gonna do? If she lifts X plus one, then that means I'm gonna have to lift another kilo. And we'd calculated beforehand. I knew I needed a 206 total to go to Rio and take the Rio spot as it stood. It could have been thrown, it could have been 210, depending on what the other athletes did. So we watched the 48 to go, thought, oh, this girl could totally do it. She's done more than four. She's come down to 48. She's super strong. She's a great weightlifter, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I could not watch. I refused to watch. I didn't go to any of the competitions to see what was happening, because I didn't want to get caught up in the nervous energy of four of it. So I had my coach sending me back from Australia. All right. This is what's happened, or not even this is what's happened. You still need 206. Next class goes. And we're watching the next athlete go and seeing whether she will do more than her previous total to push that X number higher. She did exactly the same. Far out, it's my go next, and I still have to do 206. Just 206, I reckon we can do 206. So I go out there and I'm nervous as all hell because it could mean everything to me, this event. And I went out and missed my open. I was like, okay, can't do that. Well, I've done that now. And I came back and made my second. And then, so we're a little short. Is that what happened there? I think I missed my third. No, I made my third. I made my third. So I ended up on a 93 snatch. We'd been hoping for maybe a key or two more, but because I'd missed my open, I didn't have a chance. So we knew that we needed a 113 cleaner jerk. Massive weight, I hadn't done it before. I'd done a little bit more off blocks. I'd done, I'd put it over my head. I'd jerked it from the blocks. And I thought I was strong enough. The warm up was a little shaky, and then I had, it was just a run of the mill competition, and someone else was bombing out in front of me. So I had to go out on my open. I had a slightly more conservative weight than I wanted to because the Australians team said that we have to make a total so we can qualify our quota spot to the Olympic Games. You can't open on exactly what you want to open on because you haven't done that at this bodyweight before. Okay, we'll compromise. And I went 107 for my first one. And then the Australian coach I was working with made the call to go, let's go second attempt and give you two shots at the 206 total, two shots at the Rio team. So I waited for New Zealand girl having a shocker of a calm, but her same feel and end all calm and she ended up bombing out. And it's a horrible thing, but it also changes the flow of the competition. She was on, I think 110 or 112, and I wanted 113. So I was waiting, waiting, ready to go. Or am I ready to go? And the Australian team coach was like, Oh, do you want to go and do another lift in the warmup room? I was like, no, no, no, I just, I just want to go. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. And I went out there and both of the 113s I did, I got stuck at parallel. So halfway out at the squat. And I'm known for particularly then grinding out these squats and still being able to put it over my head. So after the first one, I was like, Oh, if I can get this half an inch higher, maybe I can stand up. Maybe I can put it over my head. So I came back out, this was the be all and end all lift. This was the Olympic Games lift. Like we think about these clutch lifts and you wonder, have you got it in you in the moment? You go out there and I got stuck at parallel again. And I did not give up for seven full seconds. It's on video, thinking, pushing and it feels like you're pushing up against concrete. Like you can't move it. Concrete is not gonna move, but I thought if I could get half an inch more, then maybe I'd have a shot at the jerk. So I stuck there and I think, weightlifters don't do seven seconds. We spoke about this before, it's five seconds, sit down, have a rest. And I wanted it that much and I pushed it that much, but it just wasn't to be. And so it dropped down and that was it. That was no Olympic Games for you, you couldn't do enough. But one of the most things I'm, one of the, well, the thing I'm most proud about for that event itself was I faced that disappointment. I faced the reality of I couldn't do enough. I went out the back, shed a tear, and then came out again as Senior Oceania Champion. It was the first time I'd had the Australian Anthem played for me. I knew I'd left it all out there on the platform. I couldn't have done any more. Maybe strategy could have been different. Maybe my coach that knew me well might've told me to do things differently. It might've known my body a little bit better. It might've encouraged me to do things slightly differently, but that was the way it was, and it happened as it did. And I'm most proud of having that disappointment, but also being able to go out and stand there on the top of the podium and appreciate that I'd won a Senior Oceania. It's not something I'd done before. It was huge. And to stand there with the Australian anthem playing in the background. And I made that all sound like a be-all and end-all situation. I was lucky enough to work with a sports psych in the lead-up to Rio. I totally went all in on that campaign and justified doing the psychological work because it was fiscal as well at that time. Can't afford this. And we really went in with a mentality of, I'm in a win-win situation here. I win and do well at this. I go to Rio. Awesome. I don't. I've got another shot in a few weeks to... That's gone. No chance there. To go to a Junior World Championships, 2019, and thought maybe I had a chance for medal. Maybe. So came back from Fiji and sort of processed it and started training, got back into moving again, and then actually PB'd both lifts in those couple of weeks between trials, Olympic trials and the Junior Worlds. And then I went out at Junior Worlds and had a cracker of a comp and got myself, I went out on my opener and I secured a medal in the snatch and got myself a silver in the snatch in the end and a bronze in the total. And that was a massive goal for me because as I said a little earlier, like 2014 Junior Worlds, I was fighting for second last. Some of it comes in to who turns up on the day of these comps, how the competition plays, who makes lifts. But I had the shot and I made it. And I knew I was a strong snatcher. I had a slightly disappointing clean and jerk. I didn't make my third lift. And I almost thought it was a... My third lift was 111 kilos and I snatched 95. So if I had done the 111, it would have been a 206 total. And I think I wouldn't have been able to deal with it mentally if I had done 206, what I needed for the Olympic Games a handful of weeks after I needed to. So I don't know whether it was just... I didn't stand it up. I didn't fight as hard. I just dropped it. But it wasn't a great clean and jerk. So I was like, I'll probably come down like 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th rankings. So standing in the back room with the high performance coordinator, and we were both looking at the board. And I'm sort of in la la land, happy that I finished. And the medal is sinking in a little bit. And we're watching the board. I'm like, hang on a second. The Ukrainian lifter had just missed a lift or just taken a lift that, I can't remember whether she missed or made it, but she'd taken a lift for a total, her last lift, that wasn't going for a medal. I was like, hang on, I'm ranked third. Wait, what? I did not believe it in that moment that, like it had to be told to me like three or four times, made blatantly clear cut that I had won a total medal. And the moment that that hit, the moment of realisation, I've never become overwhelmed with emotion like that before. It just hit from the middle, from within, and that feeling was just nuts. I was just crazy. And then to go up and stand on a World Championships podium was unreal.
BEN WATERWORTH: Such contrasting emotions to kind of have what you're saying there from nearly making an Olympic team, Oceanic gold, World Championships silver and bronze. I mean, was that some of the most craziest weeks you've ever lived in your life?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That whole lead up was just some of the best training I've done in terms of my mental focus and discipline and just doing the tiny little things that you needed to do. Granted, I'm an old athlete. I need to do more tiny little things to deal with myself now. But it was certainly a whirlwind of six months.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which does that then spur you on? You're talking about what that emotion would have been if you get the two or six total, but the successor side, that disappointment of not making Rio, no doubt watching the games at home, going, that could have been me. I mean, I can't imagine that that doesn't spur you on even more for the next, well, what should have been four years, ultimately turned out to be five years, to kind of push for that eventual nod that you'll eventually do make the team for Tokyo. I mean, does that just spur you on over the next sort of cycle before you get to the next Olympic trials for 2020?
KIANA ELLIOTT: You know what? I thought it would. People talk about post-Olympics blues, but I feel like I came so close in 2016, and I came back from that Junior Worlds, and I was at uni break, so I had one exam to finish off. I wasn't working at the time, and I got the opportunity to look after someone's cat for six weeks, which is pretty cool. I got to live in this awesome apartment in Queen's Cliff for like six weeks' time, and wow, there's this couple, this lovely couple, but went off and got married and went on their honeymoon. Freedom, I've achieved this great thing. I'm going to be so motivated, and it was crushingly the opposite. I didn't understand what was going on, because I was like, I've just had this amazing high. I'm sure I missed out on Rio, and it was a bit tough to watch that. I didn't really watch it, to know that it was going on, that I could have. But it plunged me into a massive low. I didn't want to train. I didn't want to work hard. I think I committed so hard for that previous six months, and sure, it ended up in a wonderful result, but I just did not know how to manage it on the way out. On the other side, there was disappointment, there was happiness, but I stopped training. I stopped training consistently. I wasn't really doing much in terms of uni. I didn't have any structure. I didn't have my family around me, or I was just on my own with this awesome cat, but on my own and in my own head, that it just dumped me in the pits for a good amount of time. And with weightlifting, well, with me, I don't know whether it probably contributed to by weightlifting and also gymnastics, the down in the dumps and that freedom and lack of discipline and lack of structure just meant I ate. That's pretty much all I did. I was looking for what's going to make me happy that day. And at that time, it was instant gratification. It was freaking Pokemon Go at that time. That was the craze of that time. So the only thing I could find I could focus on was it would take me out of the house a little bit, and I'd wander around. It was pretty cool to catch a train into Circular Key and just see everyone around at peak Pokemon Go.
BEN WATERWORTH: You could leave the house and do social things as well.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh my gosh. Good old days. Good old days, eh? But I just didn't have the structure to do anything more productive than instant gratification. And I thought that I was doing what I wanted, but it was not fulfilling me at all. It was making me unhappy. And I was losing. I'd go into train and because of the lack of structure and you decondition and then it feels heavy. And then you're like, oh, this is not me. I used to be able to do this easily. What's wrong with me? And yeah, the low was really, really low.
BEN WATERWORTH: So how do you overcome that then to kind of turn that around to eventually qualify for an Olympic Games a few years later?
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's been a roller coaster. The big thing was a mental shift in training into instead of I've snatched 95, so 70 kilos should feel light. I'd get really pissed off at myself when it didn't feel light. And I had to be able to take a step back and be humble enough and to take the hits of my ego. And weightlifting is a massive ego sport. So go into training and be fine with and want to make 70 kilos a little better and want to make 50 kilos a little better. And it took me a long time to wrap my head around that. But once I made that connection and stopped condemning myself for not being able to do things I could do before, that's when I was able to start to make a little progress again. I made a little progress and then I sort of fell off again, and I made a little progress again and fell off. And then post-COM Games trials in 2017, where I missed out, I got pit by Keela at the last trial event by a lifter who had done the work. I had not, so what could I do? After that, I started to get the fire back for the competing and for the training again. I made a great run into 2018, and then that sort of built the foundation for the run into Tokyo. So October 2018 is when the Tokyo qualification began. So yeah, that's how we got to...
BEN WATERWORTH: Got to Tokyo, basically, which then begs a question through that period, to when it started, to when you knew you were qualified. I can imagine that that is a pretty emotional moment then to go through everything that you were just explaining, to go through, to then all of a sudden go, well, holy shit buckets, I'm going to the Olympics.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, it really... I feel like I have to pick up the pieces of the person I was to put myself back together into an athlete, into this qualification process that was meant to be 18 months, that then became two and a half years or two-ish years to compete. The first event was 2018 Worlds, to compete there and then to go to the next one. And then partway through that is when I moved to Adelaide, and to really... I was forced to make the move so that I could put myself in a position where I believed I would be best to train and compete for Tokyo. So to get to the last time we competed that counted for Tokyo qualification was February 2020. Then March hit, and then everything stopped.
BEN WATERWORTH: So you just quickly, you knew you had qualified though in February before the Games were postponed, or you didn't know at that time?
KIANA ELLIOTT: No, our qualification process was due to end at the end of April in 2020. So February would have been my second last comp. We were required to compete in six international events over 18 months. So I'd done six. I could have stopped there, but everyone else had another chance. Our continental championships, our Oceania Championships were meant to run in April of 2020. So by February 2020, I knew I'd put myself in a really good position. I knew that the other Australian girl in my class would need to do like a 20 kilo PB, which is unheard of to get ahead of me. So I was quietly confident, but not confirmed. And throughout COVID, the process kept getting extended and extended and extended as each competition got cancelled and cancelled. And eventually we got to the stage and it was about, it wasn't long ago, May of this year, where they finally said, no, Oceania is not going to run. There were a couple of continental Europeans ran earlier this year. I think Asian championships ran, but Oceania continental championships ended up not being able to run. So it was only shortly before I was officially announced that it was like, all right, we're closing this process. This is the rankings. And then within a few weeks of that, June 22nd was the AOC's team announcement when it sort of became real. And you get handed that awesomely massive boarding pass.
BEN WATERWORTH: And it's like, the Q&A, all that sort of stuff.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, that was super cool. I loved that they made it such a cool process.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Kind of a bit of a show. It's kind of like almost like, you know, like saying cricket when you see them get the baggy green or something like that. They've kind of got that sort of...
KIANA ELLIOTT: It makes it special.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: And important.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is just... It must be just all that work, though, and particularly that waiting period where kind of you just, you know, is this going to go ahead? And then kind of this.
KIANA ELLIOTT: It still didn't feel guaranteed, like...
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Up until really being on the plane, it was like, oh, is COVID going to ruin this somehow?
BEN WATERWORTH: Even like the day before the opening ceremony, there was almost that feeling that something could happen, because what Japan basically went into the, you know, Tokyo had sort of locked down again, didn't they? And they kind of, you know, cancelled the crowds and everything. So it was still that uncertainty.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh, the media was hyping up hugely. I mean, even the last couple of weeks I spent in Adelaide, I was going around and working and I was like, what if I come into contact with a COVID positive? They were like next to no cases in Adelaide at the time, but there was a little bit happening in New South Wales. And I was like, if I get told to self-isolate, will I be allowed to go to Tokyo? How does that work? And then you're like, oh gosh, don't go anywhere.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, just lock yourself in your room.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Exactly, exactly. It was really freaky because it's not, it wasn't a fear of the virus. It was a fear of losing your dream.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: So it really did not.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I can imagine.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Even until the competition day.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I just don't want to do it.
KIANA ELLIOTT: You're wondering if anyone in the village might be COVID positive, any one of the volunteers, the contractors. And it was just like, this is, could this get ripped away from me?
BEN WATERWORTH: When you were confirmed before you sort of got on that plane, I mean, do you take a moment of reflection to go through everything you've been through? You know, just a nice little moment to kind of realise that you've achieved these goals that you kind of did set out as a six-year-old basically. I mean, kind of, do you have a brief moment like that?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Um, it felt sweet in that because it was officially announced, it was public. So I'd been, you know, with my colleagues at work saying, well, I can't confirm anything, it's not guaranteed, for a long time. And once it became official, it was like, yeah, no, this is happening. I burned it. There wasn't a massive reflection process. It was still, you've got to do the work every day. I think I banked on quarantine being the reflection time for me. And it's sort of eventuated now that I'm out of quarantine. I'm like, yeah, I did think, I didn't come to a resolution or a solution as much as I, or a finality as much as I perhaps idealistically wanted. But yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: Does it come then with a moment when you're out there on the floor and you're about to make that first lift that, I mean, it's always interesting speaking to our guests about maybe when you realise you're an Olympian, like is it the moment you get the boarding pass, is it the moment you're stepping out the floor and you're seeing the rings? If you got to do the opening ceremony, is there a moment where it just kind of hits you and you go, crap, I'm an Olympian?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, it was opening ceremony. Being able to go out and march and being able to go out and see the Olympic rings and see the opening of the games, it just felt so... It was insanely emotional. I walked on my own and I was just like... welling up with emotion that whole time. This is really happening. This is for the kid that really, really struggled during gymnastics, post-gynastics, during weightlifting, that wondered whether it was all worth it, wondered whether I could. That's when it hit home.
BEN WATERWORTH: Even outside of the fact that it was a unique opening ceremony, it doesn't take away from the fact that you've got that special moment. You're walking behind the Australian flag, you're into an Olympic stadium, the rings are everywhere. I didn't anticipate it would feel like that, but it did. What was that like experience? I think you might be the first athlete we've talked to that actually went to the opening ceremony. We've talked to people about the closing ceremony. Watching it at home, it's weird. I guess you've not experienced another Olympics, so you didn't know any different, but was it a unique experience being in that stadium with no crowd and just how it was? Did it feel strange?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I can only compare it to Youth Olympics, where we... I cannot even recall whether we marched. I don't think that we did. But I remember sitting in the audience at Youth Olympics and watching the performances and just being overawed by what a beautiful performance they put on. The experience of actually marching is different. You'll bust there. There's a lot, a lot of waiting in lines under the, you don't see the show, the performance per se. I mean, Kate Campbell, I looked at her and I'm like, you know what you're doing here. She'd come out. We were in our formal uniform. We had a little sports craft bag, very handy, but small. And Kate Campbell whips out this little, tiny little tripod thing that turns into a stool. And she sits down. I'm like, that was smart. The rest of us are like, sitting on the floor. Yeah. Learned from experience. The rest of us are sitting on the ground, and it was really hot and humid. You wait in a masterpong line, basically, for your turn as a country. And I don't know what was with the order in Japan. I don't know what that is.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think it was Japanese alphabet from memory.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I think we were 30 years or something, because there was a significant amount of sitting around.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, if you're Greek, you always know you're handy, right? Cause you're gonna be first if you're Greek. So, it's kind of like the perks, I guess, of- For Greeks, you're out and already, you're in the stage straight away, boom. And you know, the less perk of being the host nation, right? Like, you gotta wait around that. Now, one quick thing before I touch on how you went, because you went very well, but obviously at the Olympics, it's a little bit different to some other competitions, cause it's just, it's a total medal. They don't obviously do the medal for the snatch as well as the total. Now in the snatch side of things, you were fifth, sixth, which I think that, which is not. Which you lived a personal best too, a 101. And I also believe this is on your birthday, was it not too? So, must be a pretty crazy experience to say that you compete in the Olympics, do a couple of personal bests in that. Why is there not a medal for snatch? Is it just the fact that the Olympics are kind of very stringent on the amount of medals they can give out and that's kind of why? I mean, is there any other reason besides they don't do the whole snatch and total at an Olympics?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I believe that's what the reasoning is with IOC. They're, what's the word? Possessing with their medals that they give away to different sports. And so I think, I don't know if weightlifting ever was, I mean, back in the day, back in the day, there was the one hand lift, the two hand lift and clean and press. And I don't know whether they gave medals out for those. And the Olympic Games is always, as far as I've known, been you get a medal for the total. Whereas world championships, you get medals for snatch, clean and jerk in total.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is that, how does that affect you in a competition? Because like you go back to your point, you're mentioning at the junior worlds that you automatically know you've got a medal. Does it, do you sometimes think, well, I've got a medal, great. Like, or do you like one medal's enough? I want all three. Or like, you know, as you said, the total kind of like, I mean, it's a unique sport. Cause to say, it's not like, say, in an athletics race, it's say a 1500, you're not getting a medal for every split time you do after every 400. Like, it's kind of a unique sport.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, we totally do a biathlon, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly, or the modern pentathlon. You get a gold after the fencing and a bronze after the swimming. Like, it's kind of a unique sport.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I mean, imagine if they split it up.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: They split it up into snatch and clean it up. I don't think weightlifters would cope with competing on more than one day.
BEN WATERWORTH: They don't like that. But how do you then feel then, say, at the Olympics? You get that personal best. You get a 101 in the snatch. You ultimately end up with a 108 in the clean and jerk. Again, another personal best. But like...
KIANA ELLIOTT: No, that wasn't. That was a poor performance.
BEN WATERWORTH: So you got to be the best birthday present ever?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. I mean, had the games gone ahead in 2020, I think it would have fallen one day off, and my birthday would have been the day, four day after. So it happening in 2021. I knew it was the 27th of July. I was like, oh, this could be really cool. And then I got number seven as well. So my year of birth, so my birth date is 2707, 1997. And then I got number seven, and I was like, oh. This is all coming to me. I was just stoked that that aligns, and then to go out there on the biggest, the hardest platform you've ever competed in, and to do a personal best. That was just cherry on top, really. I would have loved to have come through with a better clean and jerk, but I think I spent all my energy and adrenaline on the snatch, and I'm historically a better snatcher. I think I fell well below my potential on the clean and jerk, definitely. But to make a personal best on an Olympic Games platform, yeah, I'm going to take that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Definitely, absolutely, which it must just be insane in that feeling of leaving the building. I mean, do you get back to the village and there's a birthday cake waiting for you? I mean, were people kind of there, kind of ready to go with it and kind of like, oh yeah, birthday cake, PB, Olympic Games. I mean, gosh, just yeah, what a pretty good day.
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's sort of odd. Like the first place you always go to after a weightlifting competition, 99% of the time is Antidoping. And I'm always, always terribly slow at producing a urine sample. For some reason, I end up always a bit dehydrated in the competition. So two hours in there, I called my coach and chatted with the Antidoping people and learning some things about each other. And I'm jumping up and down and trying to get ready to pee. You head back to the village. I headed back to the village on my own and feel sort of surreal. Like you just did this amazing thing and you finished and it's done. And everyone else is just going about their competition preparation and for hustle and bustle. And the first people I saw was actually one of the physios from the South Australian Sports Institute. I'd never met him before Tokyo. I've probably seen him around, but we didn't have a conversation till I was in Tokyo. And he goes, Hey, how'd you go? We watched it. It was awesome. And that interaction, I was still pretty emotional from it. And yeah, that was pretty, pretty special. I didn't get a birthday cake on my birthday, but it was that physio James that the next day came and gave me a cake, a piece of cake that he'd got somewhere, which was pretty sweet. It was just pretty sweet. I did, I don't know the cakes at the dining hall, but I got to like dinner, which was super late because I'd gone back to the venue and watched the A session, the middle session, and I just didn't want a cake.
BEN WATERWORTH: What was the reaction like from home? Like not just necessarily from your family and friends, but were you getting many sort of messages from fans who had been watching it, maybe some other sort of up and coming weightlifters who were maybe, you know, a bit inspired by your performance, things like that?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I was absolutely blown away by the number of messages, text messages, social media messages, all the different platforms. I literally had like over 100 message requests, over 100 messages that I like, comments. There were so many places and it took me a good week or so to try and get to them and see them. And the response was overwhelming. These are people that come out of the cobwebs that you've like, kind of spoken to you since you were, you know, in like year six in primary school. But it's really cool that it brings people together like that. I heard back from my workplace that work had almost stopped and everyone was watching. I don't work in anything that's remotely related to sport. These are normal people that have taken an interest and watched the Olympic Games when they might otherwise not have. And to go back to work today after six weeks of not being there, it was the stories I've heard and the conversations has opened up has been really fascinating. The response from back home like with no one being in the audience, it honestly felt like there were a lot of people behind the cameras. Big classic cameramen that come around, it honestly did feel like there were people behind them.
BEN WATERWORTH: Fantastic. I mean, it's a pretty good excuse to ask the boss for like, hey, can I have a couple of weeks off? What for? Oh, just going on the Olympics.
KIANA ELLIOTT: You know, they were absolutely wonderful with it. Yeah, they really, really were. Actually, not long before I departed for Tokyo, I was awarded, I guess you say, a full-time permanent role in my job. So to come back to job security. That's a big win.
BEN WATERWORTH: Another big win. Olympics.
KIANA ELLIOTT: That's the best.
BEN WATERWORTH: Job when you get back home kind of, you know, ticking off the boxes.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I mean, that job was something that came about because of COVID. It was something that I got in that first week of COVID, first by sheer circumstance, luck. I only spent a week not working, a week of between like losing my work when COVID hit and gaining what was then a full-time temp role. So for that to eventuate and alongside this journey at the same time, I think having retired from gymnastics and struggled with that, having other stuff going for me feels like a massive win.
BEN WATERWORTH: Because it's at that level where I guess some people hear, you're an Olympian, that must automatically mean you're a full-time, rich and famous athlete, right? Where it's not the case.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I don't know what Kate Campbell's personal situation is, but I'm sure she does some amazing stuff day in, day out.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which it's fascinating though, because like, you go through all those struggles, you come to that point, you're home now, but no matter what happens in your life, no matter what eventuates from this point on, you're always an Olympian. It's like that old saying that you're never a former Olympian, you're always an Olympian, and that can never be taken away from you now, Kiana. You can tell that to the day you die, that I'm an Olympian. You have the OLY after your name for the rest of your life now.
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's pretty cool. I think coming so close to Rio and missing out, and it's very weirdly the stark opposite, where there's like crickets silence when you're struggling. It makes you appreciate how much people get around you when you do go through the process. And there's also, it's nice to have a lot more conversation around this whole concept of the post-Olympics blues. It took me a long time to understand that with every high is a corresponding low, and then I have to consciously deal with that. I can't just passively go through it if I want to. I don't know, I used to have like an inherent belief that my brain inherently would do the things that would make me okay all the time. And that period in 2016 through 2017, I shattered that. I was like, oh my gosh, I actually need to consciously work on this all the time. So it was very interesting to see the differences between courts making versus not making, but it really makes you appreciate it's the power of the Olympic movement. Yeah, it's fascinating.
BEN WATERWORTH: And is that something now that you can give back? Like are you being asked to maybe go to a school and give a talk, or if you're not, like something you would like to do, maybe go along to a weightlifting club and speak to some young athletes who were kind of in the same position you were when you started?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, sure. I've had the opportunity to go into some schools through the AOC's Olympics Unleashed Program, which is really quite a wonderful program. They train you and they equip you, as well as set a precedent and a standard for you're going out and doing a job, so you'll be paid to do that job. And I think coming as an amateur athlete, you're like, oh, do I just do this for the experience? Or this would be really cool. And you don't know how to value yourself. So to have that guidance is really cool. It's really cool to speak to kids. They just give you such a different perspective, and you really impress on them, and it makes these kids think about weightlifting, which is something that I never thought about until I was 15. I think in order to give back, it's certainly not an easy task. And I don't know whether I can actually impact it, but I would like to see positive change on the sport itself. I certainly didn't really feel like going through weightlifting that I had a structure of high performance and guidance in what it takes to be an elite weightlifter. So maybe it's more for me to try and give that back in my own way and not try and affect. I think you can do it more on an individual basis or a case by case basis.
BEN WATERWORTH: What are the most common question kids ask you when you're in those schools or when you're in those programs, be it about the Olympics, be it about weightlifting, is there a go-to question you're always getting asked?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, I talk a lot about struggles with injury. I think you can relate to the kids that maybe have broken their arm and been in a cast for a while and you know, got really frustrated at that itchy wrist or something. And I definitely really struggled with injury in gymnastics, so the question that they ask is, have you been injured in weightlifting? Have you broken anything? And I'm like, well, no, actually no. Weightlifting is like super safe. The variables are all controlled. My coach has an eye and is able to see what I'm physically capable of on any given day with my speed, my power, my strength that I'm expressing and also my head. So any weight that he gives me, I know I'm physically capable of on that day. It's so controlled. I'm not running against another person in rugby or potentially being punched by someone else in boxing. The variables are so controlled, so the risk of injury is lower.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is one of those sports, though, that you kind of... I remember when we talked to some, say, the winter athletes and said we talk about lose, you kind of think, well, this is like an incredibly dangerous sport, you're going to get injured a lot, but it's actually quite low. Weight lifting is one of those ones where you're thinking you're lifting something so heavy, it could fall on top of you, and there's some danger element to it. But obviously it's not up there. Again, I think it was growing up, one of those stats, I don't know if it's still true, was the most common frequently injured sport in Australia, something like netball, not football, and things like that because of the constant start of your leg. So it's kind of some of these sports that you don't actually realise don't have injuries as much as you think, and others that you don't think would actually have more injuries than you think.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, it's weird how it works like that. What we commonly, societally perceive as, oh, dangerous sports, weightlifting will stun your growth, or all of this stuff is actually such a disjunct to what the reality is. I mean, I think I got my growth and puberty stunted through gymnastics way more than weightlifting ever would. The training loads are just completely different.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, one thing, going through your Instagram, I do like the pictures where you've got lots of pictures of you with food. I can imagine sort of the weight element is very important in Kiana. I mean, is the diet kind of like one of the things you've really got to like during sort of in the lead up to an Olympics, are you just like, you know every day what you have to eat and can eat, or is it kind of, is it that strict?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I think as I've gotten older, as an athlete, I've understood the principles of diet. I came from a background where I trained so much as a kid, so you use your appetite to sort of match that. And then you hit puberty and gymnastics, and they start looking at you and going, don't get too big. You start getting weighed and it's like, how do I change this? I started getting injured. So the training load changed, and your body composition changes a little bit. Have that around 13, 14, and things start to change. And then that's seen as a bad thing in gymnastics. So you have that pressure influence saying, you've got to be smaller. Come post-gymnastics, I was like, I don't want to be this small child that hasn't developed yet. I consciously tried to consume more so I could be more feminine and feel like my peers. It was a weird contrast. Then come weightlifting, and it's like weight class sport. This is strange. It looks like all the competitive weightlifters out there, all the top level weightlifters, they always sit a bit heavier and they cut back. So that's what I should do. So when I first started weightlifting, I started competing almost every month in local competitions as practice. So I'd be right way in. All right, a week before comp, you'd see where your body weight was and maybe you manipulate a little bit. And then it became a very quick ebb and flow of body weight. To no real performance reason, just a bit of a cultural thing that I thought was the thing to do. No scientific backing. No, no legit reason. And that sort of up and down process became what I did. And then the more time I did bigger events, I had more time between comps, and I was having to cut back more weight. And then you rebound. There's a big culture of post competition. We go out and eat and have fun. And if you're overseas, then you just go here, right? It took me a while to realise, hang on, there's got to be a middle ground between gaining and losing. And it's only really in the past two or three years that it's like, all right. And it's always started from, shit, I've got to lose this weight to get to comp. Okay, this is a really hard process. And you do it. And you do it so many times to your body that they become physiological changes. People talk about colloquially in diet culture, people talk about starvation mode. There is some, put it this way, you restrict your access to food, energy, and your brain becomes hypersensitive to it. Do that a lot over time, you have like a super high hypersensitivity. So come about three years ago, I was like, I need to fix this. This is fucking me up so much. And so I started to engage with professionals and tried to learn a bit more on how I could reduce body weight and just sort of keep it there. So I wasn't screwing my head up as much because it was really such a head mess for me. My strength in weightlifting sounds stupid. My strength in weightlifting has never been strength. I don't have a massive reserve of leg strength. And when I start to lose weight for a competition, all the time I get to can't weight, it has a physical effect. It has a perceptive effect as well. It feels different. Your strength feels different. You may still be able to grind up the same weights, but I don't have this massive reserve to go, oh yeah, I've still got heaps in there. So mentally as well to try and learn how to eat, to fuel my body, to maintain a body weight, has been a process that I'm still learning. So you ask, do I know exactly what I'm eating each day going into the Olympics? Yes and no, it was planned. It was guided based on overarching principles. You need a certain amount of input to maintain mass, essentially maintain the same. If you lower the input, then the mass decreases. If you increase, it increases. There's so much in societal culture that champions, raw stuff, vegan is will make you lose weight. Well, hang on, what's in vegan food? Like you pair it down to the basics and it starts to make a bit more sense. But I've also had to try and work with my mind. I know that when I say to my brain, all right, you can't have X, Y, and Z, my brain goes, I really want X, Y, and Z, and that's human nature. And you can sort of deal with a certain level of restriction for a while until I feel like my responses to it have magnified over the years. So the big goal post my Olympic Games was to, how do I learn to eat like a normal person? And I can't really say again, because I ate normally when I was a child. And even as an older child doing gymnastics, I had such as high energy output that I didn't know what I was doing. I was just responding to appetite and whatever, until I started trying to manipulate my body weight. It was like, right, don't eat, because you'll get big. So the mindset has been, and it is a mindset has been a long journey and to know that it's something I can and need to repair consciously over time. So there's a lot there.
BEN WATERWORTH: There's a lot to unpack, kind of, you know, all that sort of, it's not just a simple case of, okay, well, today I'm having this, this and this. There's a lot more level to that. On that page, it's kind of mentioning where you're at now. I know this is a question that every single person coming back from Turkey was hating to answer right now, but I'm gonna ask it because it's my job. Is the goal to keep going towards another Olympics? Paris, you know, short-term comm games, kind of like sort of what's the process now for you continuing on into weightlifting?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, Olympics has always held the allure for me. I think because it was seeded at such a young age and I just wondered if I could. Commonwealth Games has never had the same allure. It's certainly there in about a year's time, but Paris for weightlifting has a giant question mark on it because of stuff that's going on between the IOC and the International Weightlifting Federation that I won't go into too much. So the what next for me is, it's 16 years I spent working for this goal. So what's going to be the driver? I feel, it was really weird immediately post-competition, I was sitting in that anti-doping room in Tokyo, and I was like, I feel so dumb. That was a highly emotional response at that time. In the weeks since, it sort of resonated to me that I don't think I'm physically finished. I think I've got more in me. And I think that's the primary driver. I can't guarantee Tokyo, I can't guarantee anything about Commonwealth Games, but I know I want to pull out more from me physically. But that comes back to, I don't think I'm, I've got more to give as an athlete day in, day out, I can be a better athlete. And that's a process to develop, a daily mindset to develop. So I think what next is less a date and time and event goal and more a process to try. The question is what's the limit of your potential, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Well, I was going to say, you know, you're still young. You're only 20, 24. You've got 11 more years till Brisbane, home Olympics. You know?
KIANA ELLIOTT: That's a really long time. It's terrifying.
BEN WATERWORTH: You still got to be young though then. So, you know.
KIANA ELLIOTT: So, 35 in weightlifting is Masters. As you get past 35, I mean, it's not uncommon. There was a woman from Columbia in the 59s in Tokyo. She was 41.
BEN WATERWORTH: Okay. I just always look at the bar now. The bar was always Andrew Hoy at 62, winning a silver and a bronze. Like again, plenty of time.
KIANA ELLIOTT: There's the legend, legend, gymnast, Oksana Chisabitna.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly. Exactly. And I think there was a, was there not a Japanese equestrian rider who was in their 70s as well? So I just also look at the fact that you got skateboarders winning medals at 12. There's kind of a balance, right?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, so what happens to the Youth Olympics and skateboarding now? I'm curious to ask IOC that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Are they too young for the Youth Olympics? Isn't it 14 to 18? So like, I mean, are you too young for the Youth Olympics? Yeah, I don't know if there's a minimum quota, but yeah. It's sometimes I'm thinking they're a third of my age and they're winning Olympic gold, so it's like, what's going on there? One quick question. We wrap up with a series of fun questions kind of just to close it out. But one quick question, given that, as I mentioned to you off air, we're a bit of a co-Canadian Australian podcast. Of course, your event, Maud won the gold, and Colin very- Well, I was gonna ask, do you have any stories about Maud? Like kind of, do you sort of associate much with her in the competition that you can share with us to keep Colin happy today?
KIANA ELLIOTT: We've spoken a few times in competition at various events. She's certainly, I think Canada has been, I don't know, been the standard for Christine Gerard as a 63 in 2008 and 2012. Did unprecedented things for a sort of Westernized country and weightlifting. And for Maud to stand up there on the top of the podium at an Olympic Games is just incredible. I'm so proud of watching her go through that. And she just had such an amazing competition. She just looked like she was in her element. She's got this amazing backstory of going to circus school, I believe. With a history in gymnastics, she did some CrossFit. But going to circus school, like professional circus school is, she can juggle. Like I've got no hope in hell of juggling, but she's got a pretty cool story.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I think she's such a humble champion.
BEN WATERWORTH: I just want to see her juggle the weights now. Can she juggle the weights? Like, is that something, you know?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Pretty sure there's some videos out there on YouTube of like Russian, massive Russian guys, like throwing 25 kilo plates at each other and catching them with one hand. I've got no hope in that whatsoever.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's, wow, only in Russia. That's something I need to find out.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Only in Russia.
BEN WATERWORTH: Only in Russia. Fun fact.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Weightlifting in Russian translates to heavy athletics, which makes sense, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: In Russia, weightlifting is just a Tuesday. You know, that's just, you know, it's kind of, they got to do that on the way to school essentially before they can go to math class that day. Now, as I said, we close out each interview with a series of fun questions. Now these are based on a questionnaire that was given to Canadian athletes ahead of Rio and Pyeongchang. Yeah. So they didn't do this for Tokyo, sadly. I hope they bring it back for Beijing in a couple of months' time, but unfortunately they didn't want to question their athletes ahead of Tokyo. But I always like to try and find an athlete from the sport or the other athlete that I'm interviewing right now. And sadly, they didn't put a questionnaire to any weightlifters in Rio. So I've gone with a wrestler today, Jasmine Minan. I was thinking, well, I mean, where can I relate this to? And I'm like, wrestling, sort of, it begins with W.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Kind of. Yeah, that's about it.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's about it.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I always got mistaken for a wrestler. We were sitting there, going to Houston for that 2015 Senior Worlds, and we're sitting in the airport, and these women, you could have picked them out of Dance Mums. Oh, no, no, no, Dance Mums, Toddlers and Chiaras.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: And they go, oh my god, you guys do wrestling?
BEN WATERWORTH: Geez, that's crazy. Well, see, it was meant to be, then, me choosing a wrestler today, because you clearly are a wrestler in some people's eyes. So these are just simple questions. There is a drawing element. You don't have to do it. We've had Ash Werner did it. She drew some and put it on our social media. So if you're a bit of a drawer, Kiana, we can give this to you as some homework. It's entirely up to you. Just put the pressure on you there, actually, for that. But I'll start with your favourite ever Olympic moment is? You can answer your own.
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's got to be. Oh, my own was pretty good. I think the one that gives me chills that's coming to mind at the moment is Matthias Steiner, the men's super heavyweight. I believe it was Beijing. Was it his wife or his kitty in the photo? She died in a car accident recently, but he put like 10 kilos on above what he'd ever done before. I mean, the Russian dude had staked his weight. He'd done it, and he'd said, basically, I've done all I can try and beat it. And Matthias Steiner went out and he beat it. And that moment, his coach is jumping all over him, and he's just collapsed on the ground, just like, oh, my God, I did that. That's a cool moment.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I remember that. I remember that. And sort of on the on the diet, he had his picture of his wife up there. And it was just like, God, just not a dry eye, right? Like, you just kind of watch that.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. No, I'm crying. It's one of those moments. If you could choose any Olympic host city, where would it be?
KIANA ELLIOTT: God, I haven't thought about that. Has there ever been Olympic Games in Poland?
BEN WATERWORTH: There has not been an Olympic Games in Poland.
KIANA ELLIOTT: They bid for the winter ones a few times. Oh, I don't know. I've had the chance to go to Poland a couple of times. I went to Wroclaw in, I don't know. There's something about, I'm partial to Georgia because I won my medals in Georgia, but there's something about some of those European countries and the towns, the real cities, the towns are just so quaint, and there's this real mix of modern and old architecture, and they're just idyllic. There's street artists, and there's cobblestones, and they're cool. Really enjoy this.
BEN WATERWORTH: They're passionate fans. I know, I'm a Formula One fan, and when Robert Kubica was at his powers in Formula One, I mean, God, just the poles that would go to the races, they were rabid, and just get behind him, just one driver. You know what it's like in the Olympic Games. They have sort of a host nation. Like it would be absolutely great atmosphere. So I like that answer. Yeah. First time I've had that answer, so I'll take it. In your spare time, what do you most like to do?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I love just getting out and exploring that sense of, or is something I try and find. I think getting out of quarantine in the past few days, there was a lot of like, just let me out of the house. The moment I found out I could leave, I ran down the street. But I don't run, I'm a weightlifter. This is weird. But yesterday I was just going bush and just gone for a walk and somewhere I hadn't been before. And just walking along by a road and there's koala like two metres up tree, like three feet too close, just chilling.
BEN WATERWORTH: Just chilling. There it is.
KIANA ELLIOTT: That's so cool. Those experiences, like you have them day in, day out, and that makes you happier than an Olympic Games. Yeah. It's fulfilling, right? Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: And you take it for granted when you see like a koala. Yeah. But it's like, you don't really-
KIANA ELLIOTT: There's so many of them here in Adelaide. I just didn't, I'd never saw them in-
BEN WATERWORTH: I've never seen a wild, like we don't have wild ones in Tasmania. So I've actually never seen a wild koala. Like obviously seen them in-
KIANA ELLIOTT: Heaps in Adelaide. Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: Heaps in Adelaide. Well, I can say- Right, okay. I've seen a wild Tassie Devil. Does that count? Is it really? Not as much as you used to as a kid, because they're kind of endangered now. But as a kid, god yeah, you'd see them all the time. So you'd hear them. You'd go to a camp. That's why they're called devils, because they scream. So it's like go camping, and you don't know what the hell you are, and you're hearing this screaming in the middle of the night. Yeah, not fun, but-
KIANA ELLIOTT: It's a bit terrifying.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Did you prank each other with it?
BEN WATERWORTH: No, not really, because we're Tassie. We know it, right? Whereas if you're with someone who doesn't know what it is, you're like, holy shit, someone's been murdered in the bush.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, it's definitely a drop bear, got someone.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, drop bears. Exactly. That's a good one there. Canadians, if you're listening, drop bears are real. The weirdest instruction a coach ever gave you.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh, God. I remember being at a Junior Worlds and having a coach tell me that what she told me was the opposite of what I did. And so I was just like, I don't understand. Yeah, that was weird.
BEN WATERWORTH: So that was reverse psychology or just?
KIANA ELLIOTT: It was like I put a bar behind me and I was told I didn't pull it enough. And I'm like, I can't have pulled it not enough because it went over my head and behind me. I was just so confused.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, no, I can understand how that would be confusing. What is your favourite workout?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I really don't have one. I just like playing with movement. I think that's as an extra, I really miss gymnastics and miss that feeling. And I like to play with stuff that I couldn't do before or used to be able to do the sensation of those tricks is cool. It's not a workout per se.
BEN WATERWORTH: When you go to a gym and you're having a workout, do you sometimes look at some of these real gym bros, they're there in their tank tops, they're all all out there, they're thinking they're the shit. I just want to go up to them and just be like, hey, you want to have a weight off here?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I love weightlifting in that you can go into a commercial gym and the gym bros, they look at the girl lifting more than they can deadlift or more than they can put her above, they can't even get her head, and they look at you and they just sort of like tail between the legs, run the other way. It's amazing. It's amazing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Sorry. If you're a gym bro listening to this, like I'm actually not going to say no offence because I hate going to the gym and seeing you guys. So like that makes me feel good that you can say that. Every time I see one, I'm just going to be like, yeah, I'm going to get Kiana to come down here and put you guys to shame. If you could have lunch with any one person, who would it be?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I feel like people always answer like really, really famous thinkers in these, like Aristotle or something. I don't know. Trying to think of an individual.
BEN WATERWORTH: I don't think anyone's actually ever answered Aristotle on this show. So you could be, you could buck that trend and be the first.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I don't think I really want to go and have lunch with Aristotle. I wouldn't know what to ask him.
BEN WATERWORTH: But having said that, though, do you not think that he would feel the, because like, it's kind of like when you talk to a stand up comedian, they always feel the pressure to be funny. And like, sometimes they just want to have a conversation. So maybe do you think Aristotle is just like, dude.
KIANA ELLIOTT: The pressure to like come up with pearls of wisdom.
BEN WATERWORTH: I just want to talk about the real housewives of Sydney. I don't want to talk about like my theories. You know what I mean? Like, who knows?
KIANA ELLIOTT: There's only a few people I look up to within a professional space and more and more it's looking up to almost people that are doing stuff that I can't or they're almost like these soft skills that I look up to people for. And as someone came to mind, but I can have lunch with that person whenever I ask, so it's not really like it could just be like, I just want to have lunch with my mum like sure, like, you know, just she's a good lunch date.
BEN WATERWORTH: What can I say? She pays and I get good food, so I'll pull a weird one out.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I don't know anything about the actor, but or the actor as a person, but to sit down and have a conversation with John Cleese would be pretty cool.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes. Now that would be a fun conversation. Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Indeed, surely, I would pressure him to be funny. Well. I'd probably just piss myself and be unable to hold a conversation.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. You'd be sitting there going, come on, say something funny. And he's just like, I don't want to talk about the data ahead.
KIANA ELLIOTT: He'd probably be like, screw this and leave.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. I mean, you know, me and John Cleese are very similar. We always know that pressure of being funny, and one of us is funny, the other hosts podcasts. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I always, especially when I was a kid doing gymnastics and having like no time whatsoever, I always wanted the ability to pause time and move around in it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Now, I find that less, but it would be pretty cool. We're still pretty cool.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. It's kind of like, what was that? I'm thinking was it Quicksilver in one of the X-Men movies or was it was Sonic where kind of like, because he's so fast, it's kind of like everything's frozen and he's kind of like, it'd be interesting to kind of see what you could do with that.
KIANA ELLIOTT: No, I think I'd still want that. I'd still want that superpower. I feel like I really struggle in conversations, especially within conversations of like people in authority to like stop and think about what I'm going to say and actually say what I want and what I actually think. So if I could pause and just be like, okay, how can I play this?
BEN WATERWORTH: Underrated power. Underrated power. Yeah. I like that one. What to you is the best candy in the world?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Candy is very American, very, very Canadian, isn't it?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I love... I'm thinking candy and lollies. I'm excluding chocolate from this in the American sense. Sour squirms.
BEN WATERWORTH: Sour squirms. That's a good one. I like it. Just quickly, the drawing elements. If you do, there's a draw a Canadian animal. There is a draw a picture of yourself.
KIANA ELLIOTT: There's a giant moose outside of the Canadian Tower in Tokyo.
BEN WATERWORTH: You can draw a picture of that if you want to. Didn't the Australian kangaroo get stolen by the Germans or something like that?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I heard that. I was not there to see it. But yeah, there was a kangaroo and an emu outside the tower. Pretty cool.
BEN WATERWORTH: Because apparently, I did read that they thought the Canadians stole it to go hang out with the moose, but then they later found out it was the Germans.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I love that Ian Chesman had to do a statement about that.
BEN WATERWORTH: You imagine his draw. I never thought in my life that I'm going to have to make a statement about the theft of the Australian kangaroo in the Olympic Village.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Very important matter. It's been our emblem.
BEN WATERWORTH: Get into the heart of these issues. As a kid, who are your favourite sports teams?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I've never been a team sports person. I'm like completely like my family never followed sport.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think that's a good thing. You don't then have to have this constant disappointment in your life of your teams letting you down.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I'm new to Adelaide and I don't get the AFL thing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Right. I think that you haven't been swayed on the power of the crows yet or just right now, the power are doing well, so you can get the bandwagon.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I watch ball sports and I've just got no idea what's going on.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'd recruit you for my footy team, but I don't want to put that pain on you because it's a very painful period in life to go for them.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, we'll probably fit right in.
BEN WATERWORTH: Stay away at the bottom and then you feel the success, right?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Don't just jump straight to the successful team.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly. I do like here that Jasmine has written here, the Chicago Bulls loved Dennis Rodman. And then for her next answer here, so the question is, my favourite sports movie, and she's written Cool Runnings. She's drawn a bobsled and written, feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme. So I do love the fact that she's really gone out of the way for her drawing.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I watch that a lot. Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Yeah. So do you have a favourite? Like, is Cool Running your favourite sports movie or is there another favourite sports movie you have?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I'm going to pick two. A typical gymnast. Stick It was awesome. But also Eddie the Eagle.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, yes.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Good movie as well.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes. Absolutely.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I'm not a big movie person, but yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: Cool Runnings of ski jumping movies. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest, Eddie the Eagle is the same movie as Cool Runnings. It's just with ski jumping instead of bobsled, so same Olympics. You know, Hugh Jackman, John Candy, same sort of people. I always like asking this question now to our guests when there's maybe not an obvious movie that I know off the top of my head. Is there a weightlifting movie? Do you know if there's a weightlifting movie?
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh, God. I was seeing one on a plane flying back from somewhere. It was like Korean weightlifting something. And it was shocking. They had this skinny little girl doing weightlifting and she had a stunt double and she just did not look like a lifter and they had cameos of her with, in weightlifting, they had these two and a half kilo air plates, which are like technique plates for kids. They look like the 25s, but they're two and a half kilos, so she had her mining a heavy lift on these skinny little arms and just messing it up completely. So yeah, that's the closest to a weightlifting movie. There's a couple of documentaries that are pretty cool, like the Bulgarian School of Champions documentary, and there's a few people coming out with more modern documentaries that follow weightlifters, but not movies, per se.
BEN WATERWORTH: The thing that I also find is that if there's not a movie, often James Bond has done it. I can't remember a James Bond movie where he's weight lifted though, so there's still time.
KIANA ELLIOTT: You know what, like weightlifting and colloquially in society, you don't see very much of, but I did see it on a Bridgestone ad or something recently. I was like, huh, there might be an opportunity there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Spokesperson for Bridgestone.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I've never seen anyone do that. Maybe an Olympics thing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
KIANA ELLIOTT: New Zealand.
BEN WATERWORTH: New Zealand, okay, any particular part or just anywhere?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I've only really explored South Island a little, very little bit. I went there when I was nine with family and then sort of trained there for a little bit up in the northern part of the South Island in Nelson for about 10 days a few years ago. And I don't know where probably South Island, but just like the amount of landscape can change in such a small span of space is just unreal. And it's such a different landscape to Australia being so close.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, and it's interesting because I lived there for a bit. And I remember sort of you drive and you'd be in the green. It's just like Tasmania. And out of nowhere, boom, here's these like snow cap peaks. And you're just kind of like, what's...
KIANA ELLIOTT: But it's like, it's also livable. It's really similar. If you go and take the plunge to move somewhere else, like, can you imagine moving to like the Congo?
BEN WATERWORTH: Terrifying, absolutely terrifying.
KIANA ELLIOTT: New Zealand would be like, well, this is familiar. This is fine. It's the same language. You drive on the same side of the road. I mean, countdown is practically... It's more words, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Basically, pack and save. You know, it's there. It's the same. It's... The one thing I say when I live there, like, you legitimately would go large periods where you forgot you were living in another country, then all of a sudden something would happen. You're like, oh, fuck, I'm in New Zealand. Like, you know.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Yeah, wow.
BEN WATERWORTH: And when they make fun of your accent, you know, something's wrong. You don't say socks properly. And I'm like, I don't say six properly. There's another drawing here. Draw your dream Olympic medal. Jasmine's drawn a maple leaf with Olympic rings on it. Quite original.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Right, like design your own.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Kind of like what you think it would be cool, basically. When you were little, what was something you always thought?
KIANA ELLIOTT: The first thing that comes to mind, I always thought CDs were, I just didn't get the concept. I thought like you put the CD in the stereo in the car and then it rang up the band and they'd play for you.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, that's a powerful CD.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I sort of broke it out.
BEN WATERWORTH: Put it in, Spice Girls are just on the line, ready to go. Oh, Kiana wants to listen to wannabe. Oh, all right, ready to go, girls, let's go. I mean, hey, you got a pretty cool CD player there, I think. Very powerful. The final one, what is your favourite joke to tell?
KIANA ELLIOTT: I can't think of a particular one. I see Fizio at the moment who just tells these ridiculously stupid dad jokes and just really poor puns, and I really do appreciate them. Poor puns are great. I'm trying to come up with one off the top of my head. I'm blanking at the moment. My coach always makes a joke about weightlifting. So in weightlifting, you weigh in two hours before you compete, and then you hang around until you're allowed to lift. So it's called weightlifting. Joking, I know. It's not a great one.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. All right. Yeah. Okay. On that note, if people want to stay up to date, Kiana, with what you're doing, kind of your weightlifting or anything along those lines, where can they follow you? Social media, website, anything along those lines? Yeah.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I got my website up and running again. It sort of mystified me. The abyss of the internet and setting up your own websites is just like crazy mysterious. I'll figure that out. But you'll find me most active on my Instagram, which is just my full name, Kiana Elliott. Two L's and two T's in Elliott. Everyone always forgets the second T for some reason. I have no idea why. I'm also on Twitter with like a grand total of 100 followers.
BEN WATERWORTH: 101 now. We'll follow you.
KIANA ELLIOTT: 100 double underscore Elliott. And I have a Facebook page, which is just my name.
BEN WATERWORTH: Beautiful. Beautiful. And is it something that you're thinking about, maybe TikTok? I'm sure there's some TikTok fun you can have with weightlifting.
KIANA ELLIOTT: I feel way too old for that.
BEN WATERWORTH: If I'm speaking to a 24 year old saying that you feel old for that, then I've got no hope. There goes my plans for my TikTok career, Kiana.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Oh, you're welcome. Sorry. Please don't let me haunt your dreams. Please go ahead.
BEN WATERWORTH: I want to be an influencer. Come on. Like, you know.
KIANA ELLIOTT: TikTok's a place. I don't know about influencer, but like, you know.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I mean, they did lift the porn band recently. So it's kind of swings and roundabouts. Off the podium. Coming soon to OnlyFans potentially. Kiana, it's been a lot of fun learning about your career. Very inspiring, I want to say, kind of everything that you've told about, sort of overcoming everything you did to get to the Olympics and to achieve what you did there. Fascinating to learn everything. And I'm saying this now, Paris 2024, we're going to keep an eye out for you and see you bring home the gold. Bugger a personal best. You've done that now. Get the medal. That's all I can say.
KIANA ELLIOTT: Different ball game hand. Hey, it's been awesome. It's been a really great chat.
BEN WATERWORTH: A massive, massive thanks to Kiana for her time. As I said, thoroughly fascinating, enjoyed every single second of that. And yeah, don't ever just simply assume you can ask a weightlifter to carry the groceries to the car. I'm sure that's something they get sick of hearing. Ha ha, it's a funny joke. What did I say in that interview, that there are some people out there are funny, others host a podcast. But again, thanks to Kiana for her time. We've got plenty more interviews coming your way. Of course, we are bringing them to you thick and fast in between now and the Beijing Olympics. So much to bring you. We've got more athletes. We've got more behind the scenes people. So very excited to bring what we have coming your way. If you don't wanna miss any of the episodes, you can search Off The Podium on all of the good podcast platforms on there. Hit the subscribe button. Never miss an episode. And while you're there, why not leave us some feedback? We'd love to hear what you're thinking of the show. Leave us a rating, helps spread the pod out there a little bit more. And of course, social media. You can find us Off The Podium. We're on Instagram. We're on Twitter. We're on Facebook. Not on TikTok, but maybe one day. And we can, we can, we do keep you updated with everything that we've got posted. I guess I just got distracted thinking about my influence or career as a TikToker. But that's where you can get in contact with us. If you wanna request a guest, say hello, tell us what you're thinking of the show. Anything else along those lines, we would love to hear from you. Thanks again to Kiana for her time. And thanks again to you for listening. My name is Ben, and as always, go left.
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