Lumen Autumn 2025 - Flipbook - Page 20
Your stories
lightweight double sculls world record in the heats. Amber returned
to the Olympics in 2008 in Beijing before retiring from rowing and
shifting her competitive ambitions to cycling.
By Isaac Freeman
For an athlete, time is often the toughest opponent. Olympian and
honoured alum Amber Halliday knows this all too well. As one of
the world’s best rowers, her challenge wasn’t only how to shave
milliseconds off the clock, but also how to find the time to train.
Compared to the set-up, transportation and cleanup that goes
into a 90-minute training session for rowers, cycling was simple.
“For me it started when I was in school – it was just a matter of
cramming as much into the day as possible, doing homework when
you can, eating when you can and freeing up as much time
as possible for training,” she says.
“I loved it because you could just go out the front door and you
were training. You can do six hours on the bike a day, but you can’t
do six hours in the boat.”
More time on the bike led to more accolades on Amber’s
impressive sporting resume. In 2009 she won the Tour of New
Zealand and in 2010 became Australia’s National Cycling
Champion.
Rowing machines helped to enable training when the weather
conditions meant she couldn’t get on the water. Pushing herself to
the limit against the clock was a near daily exercise.
“FOR ME IT STARTED WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL – IT WAS JUST A MATTER
OF CRAMMING AS MUCH INTO THE DAY AS POSSIBLE, DOING HOMEWORK
WHEN YOU CAN, EATING WHEN YOU CAN AND FREEING UP AS MUCH TIME
AS POSSIBLE FOR TRAINING.”
“I am particularly perturbed that I finished my career on an ergo
score of seven minutes and 1/10th of a second for two kilometres.
I didn’t quite crack that seven-minute mark!” she recalls after
seeing one of the machines at the Adelaide University Boat Club
during our interview.
2011, however, would be a very different story. At the Tour
Down Under race in Adelaide, Amber clipped the wheel of a fellow
competitor. She was thrown from her bike and hit her head on the
road causing significant brain trauma.
Amber has no recollection of the crash; in her words it “did
not encode”. All that remains are fragments of time: ambulance
rides, lights and family. She had to relearn how to walk and talk
again, which she also does not remember.
While Amber may not have quite beaten the seven-minute mark
for two kilometres, she did become a three-time world champion
in lightweight rowing and represented Australia at two Olympic
Games. But the journey to the Games wasn’t without its own
tribulations.
Amber experienced post-traumatic amnesia, resulting in a month
of her life missing from memory. Although losing a month’s worth
of time is frightening, she says it played a pivotal role in her
recovery process.
Just 100 days before her debut at the 2004 Athens Olympics
she broke six ribs in a bike accident – and then broke the women’s
20
