In 2004 Lisa was approached by Cirque Du Soleil for the third time to perform for them in one of the world’s greatest touring performance spectacles and this time she took it up. Despite there not being a gold medal to be won, the chance to travel the world and continue performing and using her elite skills was the perfect transition out of competitive sport.

“I started training in April 2005 in preparation for the Quidam show. I was the stand in for the lead dancer who was a ballet dancer, but the character was a free character which meant you could use your talents in the space so I combined my gymnastics with my own dance style,” she said.

“What I realised was that I move very well from the neck down but I didn’t know what to do with my face so had to learn how to coordinate the moves with dramatic facial expressions.”

The country Queensland kid was born into a loving family of six with a professor father and champion softball player mum. The kids lived an active life on two acres with a dairy down the road and a world of adventure at their doorstep. 

At five years old and as the oldest, Lisa started ballet and quickly decided it wasn’t her thing. Gymnastics was next on the list. 

“I remember walking in and it was like a giant playground for a kid. I couldn’t help swing or jump. It’s such a great sport for kids; the discipline, coordination, strength,” she said. 

Quite quickly the coaches at the gym noticed Lisa’s progress and she remembers finding routines and skills easier to perfect than her teammates and when she was 11, just five years after starting, scouts invited her to attend the High Performance Centre (HPC). But it was a big commitment; an hour drive each way twice a day. It was here she met the coach who would open up the world for her. 

Vladimir Zakharov, coach at the HPC, would go on to coach her for 14 years and was brought on to help take the squad to the next level.

At 14 she made the 1996 World Championships, becoming a renowned clean and expressive floor specialist. The Australian team’s results at this event meant the whole team qualified for the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, the first time Australia qualified a whole team.

“I was 15 when the Olympics came around and I remember thinking, I’m doing something really, really cool, but you don’t fathom it until you’re older,” she said.

Lisa made it into the All-round Finals in Atlanta and said no one expected it, “It was huge for Australia,” she said.

After her first Olympic campaign an Cirque Du Soleil approached her about joining the performing team of elite acrobatic and artistic specialists. She kindly declined the opportunity, admitting she’d never seen a show.

She went onto continue her Gymnastics training, competition, and success. There was still more for her to do, she thought. 

There were world championships and then the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.

The uneven bars were Lisa’s specialty and she flourished in Malaysia, winning gold in both the uneven bars and the teams event. 

“I remember realising I’d won,” she said after the shock of winning two gold medals at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. 

“I was smiling and I didn’t know what to do, no one tells you what to do (she laughs), I was smiling but I didn’t know if I should throw my arms up, do I sing the national anthem, or not,” she said. 

Following this experience Lisa was invited to lunch with the Queen. 

“Queen Elizabeth had watched the final of our event and had requested an Aussie gymnast join her for lunch,” she said. 

“I remember she had gloves on and put her hand out to shake mine. She was very good at making people feel comfortable.” 

In the years following her Commonwealth success, Lisa continued to compete at the elite level and qualified for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 where she was the highest ranked Australian female gymnast making the final.

After a short-lived retirement to study Science and Philosophy at University, as well as fashion design, she was drawn back to the sport that had her heart.

“I had a niggle in my head that said if I go back, I could do it, I could make another Olympics. When I started up again in 2002 everyone thought I was crazy,” 

It took her six months to get her mind and body back into shape, at 21 years old, it was a lot tougher now but she was back and happy to have the opportunity to compete on the world stage. She competed as part of the 2004 Olympic Team in Athens and moved on to Cirque Du Soleil shortly afterwards.

All was going well in 2005 when Lisa was in full training for the Saltimbanco show, but the entry medical examination came around and after having the full physical look-over the news was broken to her that she couldn’t continue with the show. 

The medical team walked in and said, “We’d love to have you here, but what have you been doing with your shoulders? They’re about to fall off!”

With multiple dislocations each year and no down time to operate between World Championship and Olympic cycles, Lisa continued to live through pain and mobility issues with strapping and will-power but it had all caught up with her. 

This was a real opportunity to get the reconstructive surgery her shoulders needed and there was an international career prospect ahead. It was time to repair and reset. 

In 2006, just a year later she was back in training for the Alegría show and took to the stage and toured the world with two new shoulders and a confidence in her direction. Lisa spent 10 years travelling the world with an amazing crew and was elevated to Dance Captain. 

“It was such an amazing space to be in. Everyone has such amazing talents and comes from incredibly interesting backgrounds,” she said.

“We visited 56 different countries but I feel like the more you see of the world, you realise the more you haven’t seen.”

After the final Quidam tour wrapped up – coincidently in Greece exactly 10 years to the day that she competed in her last Olympics – Lisa was drawn to an opportunity back home with the Cirque Du Soleil Kooza show set to tour Queensland, it seemed perfect. A chance to involve her new passion in aerial hoop performance that she’d been able to develop during the Quidam show and cut down the international travel. 

Her elegant tumbling and dancing style had been transferred into a seamless solo aerial hoop display, mesmerising to watch as the performers move effortlessly in, out and around the hoops suspended in the canopy of the dazzling Cirque tent.

The show was gaining momentum as the tour began when near tragedy struck during a performance. 

“I remember falling from six metres. I knew how to fall so I just went through all the motions. I was trying to fall flat so I’d balance the impact out throughout my body.”

She survived that six-metre fall.

“I broke my arm, neck and hip. I split my C1 but I lived,” she said.

Recovery was long and hard, the worst time of her life, she recalls, from being so active and training so hard to becoming completely immobile.

The now content 43-year-old mother passes on the most important lessons she’s picked up along the way to Queensland school students.

“It can obviously be very difficult to manage setbacks of any kind, and it can be crushing to miss out on the things you’ve worked so hard for, but I always tried to find positives wherever I could instead.”

Sally Mac