Olympian nurse is on the ball Fresh from the Tokyo Olympics, Hockeyroo goalkeeper and Olympian for Life, Rachael Lynch, talks about how she balances her nursing work with her hockey career. Rachael Lynch may be one of the only people in the world who enjoys quarantine. “I actually love it,” she says. “It’s the ultimate gift to have that time to reflect.” This may be because it’s the only time in her action-packed life that she slows down. When she’s not representing Australia as the Hockeyroos goalkeeper, Lynch is also a registered nurse, mental health ambassador and hockey coach. “I like to be busy,” she says. “I wake up in the morning and think, ‘How many things can I fit into my day?’ I’m not very good at sitting still.” And she’s certainly been busy. Lynch has just returned from Tokyo, where her team, ranked second in the world, had a shock quarter-final loss to India. “It was very frustrating but I’ve moved on from that with the knowledge that the girls played so well,” she says. “The group was really united. We’ve had a pretty horrible 12 months, so to see the progress as a group and to see the girls so happy was just wonderful.” While she says it was certainly a very different Olympics from her previous one in Rio in 2016, she says all the extra testing and precautions around COVID-19 just became part of the routine. “We’re used to wearing masks all the time. The saliva test every day was a challenge for some people, but it was just part of the day.” She says her team chose to have many of their meals in their rooms and avoided some of the teams who weren’t as diligent about wearing masks. She says there was still a good atmosphere and the lack of crowds actually helped the team. “It reduced a lot of the pressure for everyone.”
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western nurse October 2021
