Push rewind and the story wasn’t quite so simple or clear for Tupou, a gold medallist in Tokyo 2020 and one of the youngest ever Paralympians as a 15-year-old in Rio 2016.
While her journey has been complex, she credits her HPSNZ Athlete Performance Support team with getting her there, no one more so than HPSNZ Performance Life Coach, Hannah McLean, along with her HPSNZ Nutritionist, Kelsey Paterson and relatively new team member, S&C Morgan Hutchings.
“The build up to qualifying for Paris was not what I had planned after Tokyo,” says Tupou. “I’d been to two Paralympic Games yet I had so much self-doubt and in fact didn’t know if I wanted to go. Going into qualifying I really felt I was spiralling.
“Quite simply without the help of my team, especially Hannah and my performance psychologist, Rod Corban, I wouldn’t have made it. They were always there, making sure I was doing ok mentally and getting the help I needed to pick myself up.”
Hannah, who began working with Tupou after her success in Tokyo, says she has been able to build on the knowledge and collaboration from long standing support team members Rod Corban, Becs Longhurst and Lynne Coleman to build a strong relationship that helps support Tupou with managing swimming and life.
“Having longevity in sport can be tough and there are always ups and downs. Tupou and I have worked on her values and strengths and how she can grow as a person and a leader in the swimming environment and beyond.
“It is important to Tupou to be a role model for the Pasifika and disability communities and I’m really proud of the way she shares her story and experience to inspire others.
“Keeping motivated and consistent with training is the key focus from a performance perspective with Tupou and as a wider support team we all have her back.”
Tupou acknowledges that as she struggled mentally, there was a correlating impact on her physical performance. “I went into a phase where I wasn’t very active and was struggling to get myself into the right physical shape.”
Early in 2024, a new HPSNZ S&C coach, Morgan Hutchings, joined Tupou’s team and within months had started to get her into better shape.
“When I first started working with Tupou it became evident what she needed most of all was a training environment which she wanted to turn up to, day after day, week after week,” says Morgan. “For example, the gym had to be a place where she felt comfortable and empowered, a big part of this was understanding Tupou as an individual and building a connection that we could use as the foundation to help her build her physical skills.
“We’ve had a focus on building robustness which allows her the ability to back it up. We identified one of the biggest impacts S&C can have on in-pool performance is turns and take offs. This involved an emphasis on bilateral strength-power production.”
As Tupou made progress along her own personal journey, Morgan says it was important to find ways to give her flexibility in terms of the placement of training sessions throughout a week and where she did those sessions to reduce travel time. “We had to understand the big rocks and make those our priority.”
HPSNZ Nutritionist, Kelsey, is, according to Tupou, one of the most important people in her support team.
“Kelsey is amazing and has really helped with not just my nutrition but also my confidence by understanding and helping me learn about food, about shopping for food and about cooking. Before working with Kelsey I didn’t know how to cook and wasn’t at all comfortable in the kitchen,” says Tupou.
For Kelsey’s part a change in how she works with Tupou compared with other athletes has been a key part of their relationship and her growing confidence. “I’ve been with Tupou for two years and it soon became apparent that providing nutrition support in the clinic simply wasn’t working.
“I started probing about what makes eating so hard for her. It soon became apparent she didn’t know how to cook and found grocery shopping overwhelming. Initially we put in place some simple procedures like planning what she was going to cook and making a shopping list before going to the shops and then we had regular cooking sessions at home.
”I remember the first lesson. What would normally have taken 20 minutes to prepare and cook took Tupou one and a half hours. Things an able bodied person takes for granted were really difficult and took a lot of perseverance, patience and learning on her part.
“We did this for a year and then as her confidence clearly started to build, we have pulled back. I was so proud of her at our last lesson when she did everything on her own.”
Kelsey says this helped with her fuelling needs but more importantly building up her confidence. “As an elite athlete we need to ensure she is fuelling for the work she does. As a person, we want to ensure we are building life skills, doing everyday things well.”
The pair are trialling some processes during Tupou’s pre Games camp. “If she’s feeling uncomfortable or overwhelmed by the food offerings, I’ve said she can send me photos of the food available and I can provide feedback and suggestions, again to help build her confidence.”
Kelsey says watching Tupou’s confidence in the kitchen grow translates to her performance and confidence in and out of the water.
For Morgan she says Tupou qualifying for Paris was a huge moment. “It was awesome and a real highlight to see all her hard work come together.”
Tupou has the last word. “My mental journey has been tough and quite different from previous Games. The battle this time has been new. But I’ve got there and that is so important because I don’t want to let 15-year-old me down, I want to continue the dream.”
