TORI WEST

BIOGRAPHY

After coming close to Olympic selection for Tokyo, this year heptathlete Torri West has been at a new level achieving four of her five best heptathlon scores and setting individual personal bests in all but one of the heptathlon events. Tori also recorded the highest Australian score for 16 years as she moved up to number five Australian all-time.

A 3-year-old Tori West lived on the same street as her local club grass track in Warrina. Her Dad took her down one day to watch athletics and she remembers seeing someone run the 400m without a uniform, and this made her think she could do it too. She signed up soon after, but growing up would also play Basketball and Tennis. Initially she excelled in High Jump and made her first State Championship at 11. “At 15 I was scouted out by my first coach (Gary Cairns) to throw Javelin and won a national championship a year later.”

She was also a boxer and at 16, won the Queensland State title in the 69kg division. 
“After High School I was a bit lost and didn’t really know what I wanted in life. By 21, I decided I wanted to pursue the heptathlon and endeavoured to qualify for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.”
She had what she described as a ‘breakout year’ in the heptathlon but just fell short of the Commonwealth Games team.

More confident in her sporting ability, Tori moved from Townsville to Brisbane to train under coach Eric Brown and won the 2020 National title and became the sixth Aussie to score over 6000 points. Set to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic in Europe, COVID hit the world. Tori was one athlete significantly impacted by the pandemic. Locked out of Queensland for nine months, she also struggled with injuries and major season interruptions. She admits “I was extremely close to walking away from the sport.” But there was a positive. “During this time is when I built my life and career outside of sport.” - making a career as a Software Engineer/Blockchain Developer.

Her athletics career was also gathering momentum, ahead of her landmark 2024 campaign which included three scores over 6000 points including two over 6200. He high scores were in two major international combined event meets – Gotzis and Ratingen. However it was not straight forward as she had to endure three heptathlons over five weeks, two in Europe and one in Fiji. Across her individual events she set personal best in all events except the javelin. She would eventually score sufficient World Athletics ranking points to claim the last (24th) place for the Paris Olympics.

Memorable sporting achievement: Competing for the first time this year at Gotzis Hypo-Meeting in Austria has been my career highlight thus far. Gotzis is the 'Wimbledon' of the Heptathlon and attracts the best heptathletes in the world. She scored five PBs.

@ 1 July 2024 david.tarbotton@athletics.org.au