Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallist Natalya Diehm arrived home to a hero’s welcome, greeted at Brisbane Airport by excited friends and family keen to share stories and throw their arms around the new medallist.
Young athletes from Queensland Academy of Sports You For 2032 Daredevils program were at the airport to greet their coach and were among to the first in Australia to welcome the medallist home.
Natalya is both a coach and an inspiration to these young athletes that are on a pathway program to complete at Brisbane 2032. Athletes in the Daredevils program are 8 to 15 years of age, and they were excited to have their star coach back in town and eager to understand what it was like in Paris.
Natalya, originally from the coastal town of Gladstone is the first Australian female medallist in the sport of BMX Freestyle. She is also a dual Olympian having competed at Toyoko 2020.
The 26-year-old was glad to be back home and excited to be reunited with friends and loved ones.
“I feel overwhelmed with the amount of people that are here, she said. "I didn’t think that I was going to get that emotional but then my legs began to shake as if I was going to fall, as if I’d just won bronze again.”
When asked about becoming the first female medallist in Freestyle BMX from Australia she spoke about what that meant for some of the youth gathered at the airport.
“It’s more than a dream come true, this is what I wanted, this is what I was manifesting for a very long time, not just for me but for Australia, for these girls, for the next generation. To be able to pave the way, I wanted to create history and to actually do that, it doesn’t feel real yet, which is insane.”
Natalya went on to talk about what she was most looking forward to, “The one thing that I was looking forward to was going back to the training centre and sharing my success with these young kids that are here. I was really looking forward to that, to show them what could lie ahead in their future and it’s so important to a dream and encourage them to keep on dreaming and to keep believing in themselves and that is the message that I really wanted to share with them.”
She also spoke about what this meant for her younger self.
“When I was on the plane I tried to imagine what I would tell myself when I was riding, when I was eight, nine years old. It’s crazy because there was no pathway then, so I just followed my dreams and followed my passion of become a professional BMX rider and for it to lead me here. To be a two time Olympian and an Olympic medallist, it’s more than a dream come true, because it wasn’t even a dream back then."
