Emma Carney

Carney was born in England, but moved to Australia with her family, including sister Clare who also became an athlete, at an early age.[5]

Carney began her sporting life as a runner: when she was in grade four, she was the only girl to win a medal in the school (Wesley College) cross-country mixed race. As a teenager, Carney remembers jogging after school every day. "From that time on there has hardly been a day when I haven't trained", she said. At 13 she set a Victorian record in her 3,000 m debut, and at 18 she was winning national school titles. She wanted to go to the Olympics, but realised she was not going to hit her peak as a middle-distance athlete until her late 20s. She reached the finals in the under-20 national championships in the 1,500 m and 3,000 m. As she thought running for another 10 years would be "boring", she decided instead to do some cross-training and triathlons.[5] Carney quickly became one of the few athletes to represent Australia in two sports – athletics and triathlon.

In the spring of 1993, Carney tried her first triathlon, which she won after overcoming a seven-minute deficit from a 700-metre swim. Her accountant father, David, told her, "It's 18 months until the world championship in Wellington. If you learn to swim faster, you'll be the best triathlete in the world." She recalled, "My father went over everything I had to do point by point and it all made sense."[6]

In 2006, Carney's elder sister Jane died of cancer. She had thought that her heart problems were "really hard", but describes her sister's death as "a well of anguish that surpasses anything I'd ever seen or felt in life."[6]

After her ICD implant, doctors told her that she could not exercise at all, but Carney found that not exercising made her heart worse and that instead it was better to exercise a little every day to keep it under control. She then found that she could do "quite a lot" of training, provided she avoids damaging high-intensity spurts. For example, she completed an iroman-length (180 km) bike ride, and hopes eventually to complete a full iron-distance race. Occasionally, she exercised too hard, causing her ICD to "shock" her heart, as happened once when she was out running with her father.[6] It also happened in 2008 when she was taking part in the 299 km Melbourne-to-Warrnambool bike race, when she forgot about her condition and attempted to chase down the leading pack.[9]

Carney has had a strained relationship with her sport's governing body, Triathlon Australia (TA), partly because of their reluctance to allow her to compete, with her well-known heart condition, in their races. She has called on TA to require annual ECG and ultrasound tests of their elite athletes.[7]

Carney now spends her time coaching High Performance Triathletes in Australia. The decline of the Sport of Triathlon in Australia has led her to speak out about the 'appalling waste of taxpayers money for no result'.

Emma has written her autobiography – Hard Wired. Life, Death and Triathlon – which she details her life from diaries and journals she kept. It has been described as one of the most honest sporting autobiographies written by an athlete, because Emma details her early life, her commitment to her dream and her sporting excellence with the same attention to details she displayed in her sporting career. Unable to write on her Olympic Appeal, Emma had a historian reconstruct her appeal proving she was not afforded a fair trial. Her father David also provides a chapter which shines further light on this. In her Autobiography, Emma also describes the loss of her sister Jane to cancer and her brief marriage which she claims the only highlight was the birth of her son Jack.

Note: only top-ten finishes are shown in the table below.

Source: ITU profile.

• 2012 – Triathlon Australia Hall of Fame[10]
• 2014 – International Triathlon Union Hall of Fame[11]
• 2016 – Inducted as Athlete Member of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame[12]

• Official website