Olympic city

• Jessica Williams, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2005

Ally Greenwell could not believe it. It was the moment she had been working for her whole life. She had been chosen for the 2008 Olympic games, in the field of Gymnastics. And best of all, it was being held in Athens, the Olympic City.

As she stepped off the aeroplane, and the warm sun hit her shoulders, she felt a sharp pain in her lower back. She chose to ignore it.

The next three weeks were a blur of intense training and strict schedules. With each of these training sessions, the pain in her back grew from small, to very painful. She pretended it wasn’t there.

On the first day of her event she was going head to head with a gymnast named Xion Oni, from China. She had amazing agility, but was not as flexible as Ally. This was the reason that Ally was put through to the next round. The rest of her events were a similar story and she felt amazed when she found herself at the Grand Final. But with every event she competed in, she became even more aware of the ever-growing back pain.

On the night of the Grand Final, disaster struck. As she swung through the air on the trapeze, she felt a blinding back pain. This caused her to slip from the trapeze and plummet, nine metres to the ground.

Luckily, the paramedics were nearby. They sprang into action. She was rushed to the on-site hospital and, within 30 minutes of her accident, she was being operated on.

When she awoke two days later, they told her that she had snapped a minor bone in her back. The good news was that with intense physiotherapy, her back would be better in around two years. Ally did not find this news good.

But the two-year period flew by, and before she knew it, it was her standing on the winner’s podium accepting the gold medal for the Olympic event of Gymnastics in 2012.