Sam dives in to achieve ‘lifelong dream’

Sam Fricker has two great passions — diving and ocean conservation. One was inspired by watching Matthew Mitcham win gold in Beijing while the other was spurred on after seeing a turtle struggling to breathe.

Sam Fricker is on his way to Tokyo in his quest for Olympic gold. Picture: Tim Hunter

SAM Fricker has two great passions — diving and ocean conservation.

One was inspired by watching Matthew Mitcham win gold at the Beijing Olympics while the other was spurred on after seeing a turtle struggling to breathe with a plastic straw stuck in its nostril.

Those two vastly different passions have made the Cronulla 19-year-old a social media superstar and led him to the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Fricker vividly remembers sitting in his loungeroom in Newcastle with his family watching Mitcham win gold in the 10 metre platform at Beijing in 2008.

Now, 13 years later, he is days away from flying to Tokyo to compete in the same sporting event.

“I’ve always had that dream to be there and to win an Olympic gold,” Fricker said. “We would watch the Olympics as a family. Back then, I didn’t even know what sport (to do) and eventually came into diving. When I saw Matt win his, I wasn’t sure how I was going to win mine but it made me want to win Olympic gold.”

Years later, Fricker got to meet and then train with Mitcham and has big ambitions leading into the Tokyo games.

He is one of seven competing on the Australian dive team in Japan — three men and four women, including Beijing silver medallist Melissa Wu. Usually the team is double that number but due to Covid they weren’t able to travel to the Olympic test event in Tokyo and subsequently numbers were cut.

“Winning a medal would be a dream within a dream,” he said. “I achieved a dream by making the Olympic team so if I walked away with a medal, it would be insane, it would be a lifelong dream achieved.”

Fricker has been ‘sporty’ since childhood and he has had the Olympics in his sights from those early days competing in school swimming and sport carnivals.

“I was super-competitive, always driven to do better,” he said. “It is surreal to think I will be going to Tokyo in a few days. I am just trying to keep it level-headed, get there and get the job done.”

Fricker, who is the middle of five children to parents Toni (a sports teacher) and Mark (a property developer), was more into gymnastics and trampolining when he took up diving in Year 6 of primary school because he had a crush on a girl on the local squad.

Sam Fricker with Matthew Mitcham. Picture: Supplied

“It was cold, windy and raining some days so it wasn’t my favourite thing at the time,” Fricker recalled. “She was there so I would go along. She was one of my sister’s friends so she was older than me. I don’t think we even kissed but I definitely had a big crush.”

That was before the family moved from Newcastle to Sydney and he continued the sport as he started high school in 2015 at Trinity Grammar School in Summer Hill.

Maths was one of his best subjects in primary school while he did well in english in high school.

Not divulging his ATAR score, he said he “was pretty happy with it” and got “a lot better than I actually expected”.

Sport though, and specifically diving, through school, were his top priority.

Fricker committed, and still does, between 24 and 26 hours a week to training. In the morning he focuses on strength with weights and flips on dry land, as well as abdominal and body workouts, while in the afternoon he is in the pool diving under the guidance of coach Thomas Rickards.

“It was worth it,” he said when asked if he had any regrets about missing a normal childhood. “Everyone I surrounded myself with, we were in the same boat so it very quickly became normal. I don’t regret a thing because although I wasn’t at school all of the time, I would have rather been diving. I got to travel the world doing what I love. I got to hang out with people that had the same passion as me and build friendships based on really solid foundations. I feel like it really set me up for everything else I wanted to do. Any success takes a lot of sacrifice and that is just the price we have to pay.”

Fricker finished his HSC last year and has taken 2021 as a gap year to focus on the Olympics.

He intends to study marketing or business at university. The 19-year-old coaches diving at Sydney Olympic Park and St Catherine’s in Waverley and also runs an environmentally friendly wheat-based straw business — Sam’s Straws – that he started three years ago.

“I saw a video of a plastic straw stuck in a (sea) turtle’s nose and I was really inspired to do something about ocean conservation,” he explained. “The ocean has always been a place for me to escape so I wanted to do my bit to protect it.”

Fricker has more than 525,000 followers on Tik Tok and supplements his income working with various brands like SuperDry, Nivea and the NSW Department of Education. He is managed by one of the biggest social media agencies in Australia, Born Bred Talent.

Online, he hosts various segments like: “What should I flip with” — from onesies to backpacks — and also shares his love of rock diving on Sydney Harbour.

“I post everything, my day-to-day life and Olympic training,” he said. “I love it, it is good fun and it is good for memories too.”

Looking ahead to life after Tokyo, Fricker is hopeful of representing Australia at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and then the Paris Olympics in 2024.

“I want to go to the Commonwealth, the next Olympics and the Commonwealth Games after that,” he said. “As long as I am loving the sport and I am uninjured, I will keep going.”