"On the 16th of September, Ben Day and I flew out of Brisbane to meet the Australian team in Sydney. Destination: Radstadt, Austria- Via Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Vienna and Salzburg!

The next 50 hours in Sydney were pretty much a blur. We attended team bonding sessions, line dancing, adapted Waltzing Matilda so that it now read “Swifter and higher, stronger we strive, we have the power and passion inside…” (as we had to present these pieces at the Forum in front of over 100 students from all around the world. Dressed in green and gold boxing kangaroo shirts, and line dancing to a vamped up version of Waltzing Matilda I’m sure we looked hilarious, but it was fun!) And, on top of that, we flew out of Australia on a 22+ hour flight to Salzburg, Austria.

After a massive trip, and numerous hours travelling we arrived at the castle where we would spend our next week. I was completely blown away! The whole area was so beautiful. We were staying about 20minutes walk from Radstadt and another little village on the other side of us, so we walked to the cafés and functions and to the school.

During the forum, we held discussion groups about drugs in sport, Citius, Altius, Fortius and what this means to us today, along with many other things. As there were Greeks, Austrians, and Slovakians in our group, communication was a laughing point!

The wonderful week was spent making life long friendships, visiting castles like Hellbrunn (a water castle), shopping, attending functions as guests, excursions to Ramsau (Glacier, Nordic Centre), guided walks in the city of Salzburg and of course competing in the athletics day. The events were long jump, shot put, and the 60m sprint, which as I am a swimmer, are by far not my best events. But I had fun anyway, and I was a laughing point for others, so it made the day enjoyable. I was looking forward to the cross country, but I have to say running at that altitude is certainly an experience!!

Everyone arrived at the International Pierre de Coubertin Olympic Youth Forum in Radstadt as individuals, afraid of what lay ahead, but comforted in the knowledge that they were not alone as they had their team mates from their country standing beside them feeling the same things. Two boys did not know this feeling- Malcom, a 12 year old boy from Kenya, and Stuart, an 18 year old from Tanzania.

Over the week that we were at the forum these boys impacted our lives in a way that I never knew was possible- it didn’t matter that Malcom was 12 when the rest of us were between 16 and 18, and it didn’t matter that we came from completely different races, what mattered was that by the end of that forum, we felt like not only friends, but family. I will never forget his words on the last day of the forum as everyone was leaving, because they reduced even the strongest guys amongst us to tears.

Through his tears he said “I came here with nothing, and now I must go back home to nothing, but I will not be so unlucky as before, because now I have friends all over the world who care about me.”

By simply including him and allowing him to join in we had made him feel like someone who was so special, and not alone anymore. That moment is the single most rewarding moment in my life, and it is one I will treasure and remember for the rest of my life.

It was heart wrenching to have to leave all our new friends, and there were many tears when we left with the team from Czech Republic, as were staying with them as guests for the next week. In Czech we were billeted out with students from the Gymnazium Pierra de Coubertina Tabor who had also attended the forum. My host family were wonderful, and they really looked after me. We attended school, went canoeing in their PE lessons, went shopping, attended meetings with their Mayor, and visited many of Czech Republic’s famous places, like Old Town Tabor, Prague, Cesky Krumlov, the beautiful Renaissance/Baroque influenced castle Hluboka and we even managed to get ourselves into the Tabor newspaper!

The Forum was about the Olympics, but I also believe that it was about struggle- The struggle to discover who you really are, the struggle to step outside your limits, and the struggle to not be too proud for one moment so that you can actually appreciate what is surrounding you.

By challenging ourselves, we can make wonderful friends, experience things that we never believed were possible, and be someone we never believed existed.