Bio: Melissa Wu

Melissa Wu   Date of Birth - 03/05/1992 Hometown - Windsor NSW, Australia Living/Training - Sydney, Australia First Club: Parramatta Diving Club  First Coach: Anita Weaver Representative State - New South Wales Current Coach - Chava Sobrino SIS/SAS - New South Wales Institute of Sport Event - Platform Instagram handle - @melissapaigewu Tik Tok handle - @melissapaigewu

About Melissa

Melissa Wu is one of only three divers to represent Australia four times at the Olympic Games. She has two Olympic, three World Aquatics Championships, five World Aquatics Diving World Cup and four Commonwealth Games medals to her name over her career. Her long list of achievements makes her one of Australia’s most decorated sporting representatives.

• How did you get your start in diving? I started at 10 years old. My older sister was a swimmer, so I spent a lot of time at the pool watching her. I hated swimming though and preferred gymnastics and flipping around all the time, which is why I wanted to start diving. As soon as I tried it, I loved it and knew that I had finally found a sport I wanted to be good at.
• What has been the greatest influence on your sporting career? My coach Chava Sobrino. I’ve known him since I started diving and he’s been my coach for 14 years. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs together throughout my career, but I never would have achieved what I have without him. Beyond diving, he’s had a massive impact on me as a person. He’s incredibly wise and has taught me so many things over the years including how to be a great person and I’ve always aspired to be just like him - hard working, friendly and someone that has a positive effect on so many people.
• Who is your diving inspiration? I’ve always admired the Chinese divers for their technique and mental toughness and I still do to this day.
• What do you love about diving? I love the feeling of getting a dive right, the adrenaline rush of diving off 10m, and the process of getting into peak form for the diving season. Training can be really hard but getting to the point of being ready for competition is a great feeling because it’s when diving feels the easiest and when you feel the most prepared. And when you compete well, you can look back and appreciate all your hard work. 
• Most challenging part of diving? The most challenging part is consistently backing up for training day after day, week after week. It can be tough both mentally and physically to accumulate the volume of repetitions required to prepare for competition and sometimes it’s also tough to know when to push and when to back off. You need to train hard but also look after your body so that you can keep getting the most out of yourself every session
• Favourite place to dive: Sydney! There’s just something about your home pool that feels familiar and always feels easy to dive in.
• Something you might not know about me: I’m learning Spanish
• Hobbies outside of diving: I don’t have time for a lot of hobbies due to the many hours spent training and working. For work, I own a gym called HrdKAW Strength with my brother Josh and sister Maddi. It was named in honour of our sister Kirsten, who passed away nine years ago. My siblings are head coaches of our weightlifting club, which is the biggest weightlifting club in NSW and I coach our Strength and Conditioning program and work with athletes across multiple sports.
• If you were not a diver, what sport would you do?  Probably something similar to diving - gymnastics/ trampolining/tumbling, etc

International Results