Toyota announces top British diver Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix as an Olympic ambassador. She joins a number of athletes partnering with the company in the run up to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, who embody Toyota’s ‘Start Your Impossible’ message – that you can overcome challenges and achieve your goals.
Diver Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix
The announcement coincides with the release of the third episode of The Journey docuseries, produced with Team GB, which features Spendolini-Sirieix talking about the mental challenges she has overcome to reach top level competition, and her dreams of achieving Olympic success.
Aged 19, Spendolini-Sirieix has been diving for 11 years and is already a world-class competitor. She burst onto the scene as a 13-year-old, making her international debut, and just two years later won her first solo gold at the 2020 FINA Diving Grand Prix. She has amassed over 20 senior national and international medals, including two golds at the most recent Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and two golds at the European Games in Rome. This tally has helped her become Britain’s most successful female diver of all time.
In The Journey, Spendolini-Sirieix reveals how diving has moulded her personal development: “I’ve gone through a lot with my diving and it’s shaped who I am, not just as a diver, but as an athlete. And the drive, focus and determination that I have in training, I brought into school.”
Spendolini-Sirieix describes how it felt when she started on the senior dive circuit at just 13 years old: “I was a little scrawny kid, no meat on me, and I was throwing myself off 10 metres like the adults. Nothing is expected of you when you’re the underdog, it was like a superpower.”
Later in the film she talks about the stress she experienced after a disappointing result from a competition in Budapest when she was 13 and going through adolescence, which made her question whether she wanted to continue diving: “I was having panic attacks at school and at training. That period was incredibly difficult – I just didn’t perform. As much as it was painful, it was also the best kick in the butt I could have asked for. Sometimes you learn the most when you’re at rock bottom.”
Spendolini-Sirieix’s mother Alex also features in the film. The strength and importance of her support are clear when Andrea speaks with emotion about her mum being her superhero: “Having that strong person behind you who won’t let you give up, as much at the time that I really didn’t like it, it’s something that I value so much. My mum means everything to me; it’s that kind of relationship that I will never take for granted – she’s taught me how to be a strong woman.
Episode three of The Journey is live on Team GB’s YouTube channel and can be viewed here:
The four-part docuseries The Journey, created by Team GB and Toyota, brings fans inside the lives of four athletes as they prepare for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Episodes one and two feature breaker Roxy Milliner, aka B-Girl Roxy, and Dame Laura Kenny; the fourth will focus on reigning Commonwealth and World Champion gymnast Giarnni Regini-Moran