Getting to know Georgia Sheehan

Georgia Sheehan is a professional diver who trains with the Victorian Institute of Sport, and competes for Diving Victoria and Diving Australia. She’s a Commonwealth Games gold and silver medalist, and says her most exciting career highlight to date is competing at the home Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in 2018. She’s been selected for her fourth World Championships for Australia, and will compete in Singapore in late July, 2025.

Congratulations on making the team for Singapore, you’re no stranger to representing Australia, but does it ever get old putting on the green and gold?

It never gets old, not to me, anyway. I think it’s always such a motivating and also, just a really inspiring feeling whenever you qualify to represent Australia at a World Championship, so [I’m] definitely looking forward to it. This will be my fourth time representing Australia at a World Championships.

It’s been quite the big year for you so far how are you going with goal setting at this point of the year?

Yeah, I’m going okay. It’s definitely been a long season and a long year so far. So [I’m] looking forward to a break when we get back. This is one big final push before that. And I’m really looking forward to showing off all the hard work that myself and also my teammates have put in over the year.

Your teammates are here behind you warming up for practice, what’s the vibe in the team like ahead of travel?

Yeah, it’s really good. We’re lucky at the VIS to have a amazing team. I think in the fact that everyone gets along and culturally it’s just everyone’s glued and meshed together really well. So the vibes are definitely high as we’re preparing to leave next week.

You took up diving after watching Melissa Wu and Matthew Mitcham compete in Beijing, what made you decide to become a professional diver?

It looked less scary than gymnastics, if I’m being really honest with you. So I started out in gymnastics and was quite the scaredy cat. I could never get past the balance beam. And so once I’d watched diving on the TV, I thought it looked slightly less daunting, although looking back, I don’t know if that was correct, but it definitely inspired me to make the switch, and I guess I haven’t looked back.

You went viral last year you wrote a piece for Vogue Australia about just missing out on the Olympics. You’ve had so much success in your career. This article really inspired people to see what work does go into it [diving] and how certain opportunities can happen, what’s the response still been like from that piece?

I still get a message from time to time. I think just the influx of positivity and support that I received during that period of my life, and once I had kind of popped that article out, was amazing. I was just really touched that I could help inspire so many other athletes who had been through a similar thing. I think it’s had a really positive impact, and opened up a really important conversation about sport at an Olympic or a high elite level. And I hope that it not only opened that door, but also helps to continue those conversations.

Is that honesty and transparency amongst athletes and their fans something you’d hope to see more of?

Yeah, definitely. I think the athlete journey is everyone knows that it’s really hard and really gruelling, but there’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff. For example, I’ve just run late [for this interview] because I’m coming from work. We really are out here grinding almost constantly, whether you’re working or studying. So I think definitely just getting that awareness out there, and keeping the conversations open and honest are always a positive thing.

You’ve been training here at MSAC for quite a while now, with beautiful dive boards to train on and an incredible dry diving area. What’s it like to know that you’ve got the best facilities to help you prepare for these big world events?

I love this pool, I really do. It’s light, it’s bright. The springboards are just world standard, which I think makes a really big difference when we go to transition to a competition as big as the World Championships, we feel like we’re walking into the pool, and we’re right at home. So having the best facilities to prepare makes all the difference in the world.

Do you have any advice for the young divers who might be watching the World Championships who might also look at you and decide that they want to be jumping off a three-metre springboard in 10 years time?

Always a really good question, and I always find one of the hardest ones to answer because I just want to give so much advice! But I think if I could say two things, it would be to be brave and believe in yourself as well. I think in any sport, there are going to be setbacks, that’s completely inevitable, but it’s how you push through those and get to the other side that determines your success and how much you enjoy it as well, and how proud you are of yourself. So definitely be brave.

Georgia is part of the High Performance Program at MSAC through the VIS. If you would like to learn more about diving at MSAC, head to Diving Victoria’s website here.