Natalie Cook helps athletes share their dream golden moments in a podcast to mark cancelled Tokyo 2020 Olympics
They didn’t get their chance at Olympic glory in 2020, so gold medallist Natalie Cook has created a podcast that allows Aussie stars to talk through their dream performance on the day they would have competed in Tokyo.
QLD News
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With Australia’s athletes robbed of their chance to compete at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, gold medallist Natalie Cook was determined to give them the golden moment they missed out on.
The five-time Olympic beach volleyball player will next Friday – the day the world would have celebrated the Opening Ceremony had it not been postponed 12 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic – launch her new podcast, On My Day with Nat Cook – Tokyo 2020ne.
Over 16 days the Queenslander will share an interview with an athlete on the day they would have competed in Tokyo, where she gets them to talk through their dream gold medal performance in vivid detail.
“For me, it was just seeing the grief and heartbreak that the athletes wouldn’t be able to perform,” Cook told The Courier-Mail
“I wanted to give the athletes the chance to feel what it would be like, and to let them know we haven’t forgotten about them and we are right here with them.”
It will open on July 24 with a bonus episode with Olympic champion cyclist Anna Meares and close with Rio’s closing ceremony flag bearer, rower Kim Crow.
Other guests include swimmer Mitch Larkin, boxer Skye Nicholson, surfer Sally Fitzgibbons, archer Taylor Worth, diver Melissa Wu, sailor Mat Belcher, water polo player Bronwen Knox, BMX rider Caroline Buchanan, walker Dane Bird-Smith and cyclist Karlee McCulloch.
Cook, who won gold with Kerry Pottharst in Sydney in 2000, also hoped to motivate the athletes to “live as a gold medallist every day for the next 12 months” to give them the best chance in 2021.
“I lived that in the Sydney games. We had to build our chances to win and live as a gold medallist before it happened,” she said. “Usually this close to an Olympics in an interview they are very cautious about their performance. I wanted to go right to the heart of it to say ‘When you close your eyes at night and put your head on a pillow and dream … what is that like?’
“Some of them can’t go there, they can’t bring themselves to say ‘In my dream I’m winning the gold medal’. Others live it so vividly they are choking up … I’m on the edge of my seat listening to them, tears in their eyes, because they don’t get to voice that.”
The podcast will launch across Spotify, Apple and various sites on July 24.
Originally published as Natalie Cook helps athletes share their dream golden moments in a podcast to mark cancelled Tokyo 2020 Olympics