Interview Highlight: Emily Petricola OAM

Published Jan 31, 2025, 1:45 AM

Emily Petricola OAM, won Gold in Paris after winning Gold and 2 silver in Tokyo. Emily chats with Peter Greco about her Paralympic successes as well as living with Multiple Sclerosis.

Well. Emily Petricola IAM won gold in Tokyo and a couple of silver medals. That was fantastic. But to follow up with gold in Paris is another thing. Emily's on the line and great to catch up. I know it's a little while ago, but congratulations to the happy 2025.

Thanks, Peter. Happy New Year to you as well.

What do you think of Paris now? It's a little while ago. Does it seem like a bit of a distant memory? Can you kind of still bask in the glory?

Um, I think so. It definitely feels like a long time ago now. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, and there's been a big rehab off the back of it. So I certainly feel close enough that, you know, I'm still sort of in the recovery phase, but far enough now that I can appreciate it and feel proud of what I was able to achieve there.

Well, you're only a young woman at the moment, but I guess in maybe 30, 40, 50 years time, you're probably going to look at look back on even more fondly. Do you think, I mean, do you think that's kind of the thing that happens when you speak, when you smack the older athletes?

Yeah, I think that when, um, when I actually come to retire. I think that's when you sort of sit back and look at all of the things that you've achieved in your career and feel satisfied, I guess. I think when you're in it, it's pretty hard to feel like that. But as I say, like I've had a fair chunk of time off just because of like I've been necessary off the back of everything that happened in Paris. So I've had a bit of a bit of a chance to sort of think about it and be a bit pragmatic and appreciate what I was able to achieve. So I feel I feel proud of it. And but I also won't focus too much on it until I hang up the bike completely.

The total elite athlete, that's what. That's the difference between people like you and people like me. I'd still be basking about it. Hey, Emily. You won gold and two silvers in Tokyo. That was a mighty effort. But I guess that the mark of an athlete, I always think, is kind of longevity in a sport. And to be able to sort of butter up, you know, or three years later, as it was with the Tokyo to Paris, that, that kind of, um, you know, sort of puts an exclamation mark on her career.

Well, I mean, hopefully not just an exclamation mark on my career, but it definitely was satisfying to be able to back up and win again, because I think people take for granted that you can always be the best who don't understand how hard it is. It's almost easier to get to be the best once, but to continue to be the best in the world is actually really challenging in ways that people who haven't done it could never imagine. You've got to really sacrifice a huge amount of yourself, and you go into it knowing how much sacrifice goes into maintaining that standard and improving that standard every year. So to be able to back up and win in Paris was special for so many different reasons.

And of course, another thing is that, you know, so much can go wrong. I mean, you can have the perfect preparation or, you know, different hiccups along the way, but I guess it's a how you recover from them and then b how you're kind of rectifying who that might have gone wrong in that preparation.

Absolutely. Like for me, I had a meeting today, actually, with the team that I'll be working with moving forward. And I think that physically or physiologically, I've never been fitter than I was for Paris. But physically, I was the most compromised I've ever been for an international competition. And so that's a different challenge when you know that physiologically you're in the best shape of your career, but physically and functionally your body's not doing anything it's supposed to be able to do. So that was I'm I'm actually so much more proud of the result that I was able to get in Paris than any other one I've achieved in my career. Not because it was, you know, the Paralympic gold medal and it was, you know, defending something. It was more around my emotional resilience to be able to get on that start line, not knowing what was going to happen on that day and having everything that could go wrong, go wrong in the preparation from a functionality point of view and still get the job done. Like, I feel really proud of that. So yeah, it was really it was a it was an awfully hard last six months, and I would say the last three months in particular and the whole pre camp, literally everything that could go wrong did. But we still walked away with a gold medal and a world record. So I'm feeling I feel really proud of myself and my team for what we were able to achieve over there.

And when you're trying to ride a bike really fast, those sort of things all add up, don't they?

No one, except for the people who worked through that stuff with me on a physical level, like the medical staff that we had in place, you know, before I left. And then whilst I was away, they're the only people who really have any idea of what my specialist back here who was having to deal with emergency phone calls and, you know, emails coming in all day and all night playing into competition about how we could potentially do something to try and settle stuff down. They're the only people who really have any idea about how hard that was and the challenges that were put forward by my body. You know, we can't really complain about it when that's the reason that you're there. But gosh, you know, you always hope that you can get through And just be able to compete fairly on a fairly level playing field. And just this was not it this time for me. And but we still, as I say, we still walked away with a gold medal and a world record despite all of that. So it's like it's a huge credit to, you know, not just me, I would say far more so the people who have had to manage me through that period.

I mean, this is the most utterly respectful way where the times when you thought, I've got a gold, I've got a couple of silver from Tokyo, I can kind of give, give it away or I can kind of go on the back burner.

Well, two years ago, my specialist had a really serious conversation with me in terms of the rate of progression with the disease for me and the fact that we'd moved from we're looking more at a secondary progressive disease rather than relapsing remitting. And at that point, I asked the question about whether or not I should retire, because I will never like as much as I love racing my bike and riding my bike really fast, I would never prioritize that, or any gold medal or any medal ahead of my health, my long term health. So I definitely did think about it. And in those last, you know, three months leading in, I was like, oh my gosh, did I make the wrong decision? Should I have been to it? But I definitely feel like, you know, it was the right thing to move forward. I wasn't doing any more damage by continuing to, um, go through with the the racing. And clearly, I was still able to do what I needed to do to get the result. For the people who put in a huge amount of work around me. You know, I don't really do this. I don't win medals for myself. I do it to try and honor the work of everyone else around me. I like being fast on my bike and that I really like, you know, following plants other people put in place. That's really all I do.

And that resilience emotional, physical and psychological, you know, I guess that again, that's what kind of sets you apart from others.

I think this is one of the things that people underestimate about someone who has who has a disease like M.S.. It's so challenging on a day to day basis that you're forever having to be flexible with your mindset around what you can and can't do. And it's not. It's never easy for any elite athlete to have to change a plan. But when I've always been someone who if I commit to something, I'm doing it. And if it's in the plan, I'll do it. Whereas in the last, I would say one of the strengths that I've developed and I've had to learn this skill is to know when to pull back and when to push forward. So, you know, like that's that resilience has come from lots and lots and lots of practice of not everything going the right way at the right time. But I would say what happened in Paris and the lead into Paris was on a different level to what I've experienced before. And I feel really, as I say, I just feel lucky that, you know, I had the team around me that I did, but also beyond that, I walked into that velodrome on that day. I saw my brother with his kids come in, and one of my best mates was there with one of her daughters. As soon as I saw those guys there, I didn't even care what the result was because for me, it was about being able to just do my best in front of those people who don't care whether they want me to win a gold medal, because they want that for me. They think I deserve that. But it was more about they that they care about me as a human rather than me as a gold medal winning athlete.

That's powerful, isn't it? That's powerful. And I guess in a sense, you know, getting to the start line was more important than finishing.

Well, I was always going to finish. It was where I finished. That's probably how well I finished and whether or not I could walk at the end of it. Uh, you know, like I paid a big as I say, I've paid a really big toll for what I did in Paris. So. And they've definitely been moments since then that I've questioned whether or not it was worth it. But I would say definitely in the five minutes at the end of or, you know, the half an hour after I won the IP, it was definitely worth it for those. For that 30 minutes, it was 100% worth it.

Listen to link here on Business Radio, radio 1190 7 a.m. in Adelaide and across the Australia Radio Network. And we're speaking to Emily Petricola, two time gold medallist and a couple of Paralympic silvers to beat Emily Petricola I am. And the miss, it kind of doesn't follow. Um, I mean, it's different for everyone, isn't it? It's different for different people who have got it. So I guess that's kind of good in a sense, but bad in a sense, in terms of the team that you're dealing with. I mean, you talked about your specialist in, in Australia, kind of, uh, you know, being up all hours trying to, to work out what to go on. It's kind of, you know, it's kind of not, uh, not an easy thing to, to sort of analyze, you know, individual from individual.

Uh, it's really different for anyone. Uh, it's like most, you know, I mean, very few people who have cancer, for instance, are like, no, there's no one one roadmap that works for everyone. And miss is much the same. It can be aggressive, it can be far less aggressive with other people. I'm unlucky in that. It's always been fairly aggressive with me. We've had some pretty good periods where treatments have worked really effectively and other periods where it was less so. So, you know, you've got to really surround yourself with good people and good. Like when you're in a sporting environment like I am. I'm lucky that I work with some of the, you know, the best of the best when it comes to sport, and my specialist Neil Shuey in Melbourne, he's also been really exceptional in terms of being incredibly supportive of what I'm doing. So yeah, like I'm saying, I've been lucky in my time in terms of the people that I've had around me helping me manage.

Because the medical profession generally and kind of understandably and probably to their credit and to our benefit, are kind of conservative, aren't they, with their approaches. I mean, they're going to put your health over winning a gold medal each and every time. But by the same token, I guess if you're working with the team that you're working with, maybe they're a bit more understanding or empathetic to your want to get out there and compete.

Absolutely. It's really interesting. My specialist, I mean, when we had that conversation back in 2022 and I asked whether or not I should retire, and he said no, because, you know, one thing that they do know is that exercise? Yeah. Positive impact on people with Ms.. Especially secondary progressive disease. I don't know much about secondary progressive disease, but they know that exercise is something that helps to control the, uh, level of degeneration within the body. So and disease progression. So he encouraged he said, you know, there's no there's no, um, group dataset of people with Ms. trying to be elite athletes.

Yeah.

The, the level at which I'm doing this, they don't have, you know, data on that. But you know exercise is positive. As long as I'm smart and listen to my body and do the best that I can to manage, like the fatigue and everything else that comes along with that. And, you know, some of the muscular stuff that happens off the back of it. Then he couldn't see any reason for me to have to retire at this point, and certainly not because of the disease.

What about the complementary side of things? I'm thinking about diet supplements, uh, massage, ice baths, all the sort of things that, you know, the, the kind of one percenters that people talk about.

Yeah. The things that are most important for me in me in terms of recovery. I can't go near an ice bath. It has a really negative impact on my body from an Ms. perspective. Actually, it got really cold is the same as really hot on my body. So for me, the things that work the best. I have compression boots, uh, recovery boots that I use on a regular basis. I have massage when I'm going, when I'm being really smart and really focused properly on my recovery. I have massage each week and physio at least, you know, an hour a week, sometimes twice a week, just depending on how severe. And I mean the leading. Obviously for the games it was daily, sometimes twice or three times a day whilst we were in camp, because my body was just doing so many strange things. So for me, the sensory stuff is has a really big impact, more so than anything else.

Diet. Careful with.

That. Yeah, yeah I have I mean, uh, cycling, you generally need to be mindful of making sure you, you know, your weights are sort of an optimal level anyway for a powder weight. But for me, it's actually about fueling around training and making sure that I'm getting enough of the right nutrients at the right time to maximize, um, my physical response and my physical recovery from that perspective has a really big impact.

You talked about feeling, uh, in a sense, more satisfied about Paris than Tokyo. Of course, you're able to compare in terms of we talked about family and friends being in Paris. Nothing like that could happen in Tokyo because of Covid. So I guess all those sort of things may be made Paris even more special.

Oh, without any question. One of the things that separated the two events was the fact that you got to have people there and, you know, going to Tokyo was super exciting, but it was also super stressful, not just because it was a Paralympic Games, but because you were so worried every day when you did your test that it was going to come back positive and that was going before you even had a chance to race. So it was a really different feeling this time. Overall, I would say for me, the reason why Paris was special was number one, because I had my people in the stands that day when I won, but also because I took a lot of pressure off myself in terms of whatever happens, happens. I've done everything that I possibly can do. I put myself give myself every opportunity to put out the best performance. And, you know, if my body wasn't able to do that on the day, there was nothing more I could have done than what I did. Whereas with With Tokyo, I think I felt a lot more pressure because everything had been relatively seamless in coming in into that event. It was it wasn't the same. Like, I, I feel like this entire cycle, the three years pretty much from 2022 onwards, has been me battling my body a lot, and we just never quite got on top of it. And then it all blew up at the wrong moment. You know, I wish it could have just lasted six more months before it decided to throw it at me, but I think that has set me up better for this coming cycle as a result.

Now, I hope to speak to you many more times in the future. But what about the coming cycle then? So you're obviously going on.

I'm continuing of what I've said to everyone that I'm working with. I had a meeting with, you know, the key players. I'm a physiologist and one of my coaches. When I first got back to say, do we think, number one, I can continue to improve? Because if we don't, then there's for me, I'm not interested because you have to give up so much to do this. And if so, if we do think that I can continue to improve and we haven't, you know, mind every bit of everything out of me yet, then I think I'll commit to two years and see how I go physically over the next two years from an Ms. perspective. And because, you know, they've changed the, um, a couple of the track events now. So the shoots gone to four kilometres and the 500m time trial is now going out to a kilometre. So that's like a really big change for the track program. It's a new challenge. So I would really like to try those things. And I want to try and be really great in the in the road time trial again. So, you know, I've got a bit to prove still over these next two years. And then if, if we get to the end of the two years and number one, I'm physically in a really good spot. And number two, if I'm still really competitive and we think that I'm a good chance to, you know, go again and have more success, then we'll go through for the entirety of the cycle and then hang it up at LA. But well, we've got to get through this first two years to see see what happens.

And it's been really great talking to you. Thank you so, so much. We put in a request pretty early on. You were recovering and we certainly respected that. And we're certainly very grateful for making some time for us today. I should point out that the Mighty Swim is coming up next month, which is helping raise funds and awareness for EMS, so hopefully people can help out. As far as that goes. Congratulations again. It's a wonderful achievement. And, uh, there were a few more chapters to be written in your story yet. Emily.

Let's hope. Thanks.

Tita Emily Petricola OAM. What a what an incredible story and certainly a wonderful insight into the mind and body of an elite athlete.