Britain’s most successful female diver of all time talks about the mental challenges she has overcome to reach top level competition
British diver Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix features in the third episode of Team GB and Toyota’s The Journey docuseries. In the episode, Spendolini-Sirieix talks about the mental challenges she has overcome to reach top level competition, and her dreams of achieving Olympic success.
She joins a number of athletes partnering with the company in the run up to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Toyota’s focus is on overcoming challenges and achieving your goals under the ‘Start Your Impossible’ banner.
Aged 19, Spendolini-Sirieix has been diving for 11 years and is Britain’s most successful female diver of all time.
She made her international debut at 13 years old, and two years later won her first solo gold at the 2020 FINA Diving Grand Prix.
She has amassed over 20 senior national and international medals, including two golds at the most recent Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and two golds at the European Games in Rome.
In The Journey film, Spendolini-Sirieix reveals how diving has moulded her personal development: “I’ve gone through a lot with my diving and it’s shaped who I am, not just as a diver, but as an athlete. And the drive, focus and determination that I have in training, I brought into school.”
She describes how it felt when she started on the senior dive circuit at just 13 years old: “I was a little scrawny kid, no meat on me, and I was throwing myself off 10 metres like the adults. Nothing is expected of you when you’re the underdog, it was like a superpower.”
Later in the film she talks about the stress she experienced after a disappointing result from a competition in Budapest when she was 13 and going through adolescence, which made her question whether she wanted to continue diving.
She said: “I was having panic attacks at school and at training. That period was incredibly difficult – I just didn’t perform. As much as it was painful, it was also the best kick in the butt I could have asked for. Sometimes you learn the most when you’re at rock bottom.”
Spendolini-Sirieix’s mother Alex also features in the film. “My mum means everything to me; it’s that kind of relationship that I will never take for granted - she’s taught me how to be a strong woman,” she says.
Episode three of The Journey will be live on Team GB’s YouTube channel from Thursday (11 January).
The four-part docuseries The Journey, created by Team GB and Toyota, brings fans inside the lives of four athletes as they prepare for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Episodes one and two feature breaker Roxy Milliner, aka B-Girl Roxy, and Dame Laura Kenny; the fourth will focus on reigning Commonwealth and World Champion gymnast Giarnni Regini-Moran.
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