Zach Schubert represented Australia at the Olympics earlier this year, but the Loxton-raised beach volleyball star had to battle his fair share of adversity on the way to Paris.
Zach joined Flow FM and explained that he never thought he would make it to the Australian team.
“I've had some pretty major surgeries throughout my career, so I never actually thought I was going to be able to get back to going full pace and having a chance to actually go to the Olympics. So after 12 years of grinding to actually make the Olympics, it was everything I could have wanted in my life. It was awesome.”
Zach is the cousin of Australian hockey legend Grant Schubert, and was lucky enough to have exposure to Olympic greatness from a young age.
“He was probably the biggest influence on my early years when I started playing sport and what I actually wanted to do in sport. And it was always about going to the Olympics because of Grant.”
“I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world and that's what I wanted to do.”
Grant’s influence on Zach led him to play hockey at a young age, but he bluntly explained that it wasn’t his best sport.
“I was no good at it... and I never got hit, so I couldn't just make the switch over to footy all of a sudden. I'm pretty tall and I'm athletic and I can jump hard, but I can't necessarily hit hard because I'm pretty skinny. Luckily I just fell into volleyball.”
Falling into beach volleyball was a blessing for Zach, as it led him to representing the nation on the world’s biggest stage and competing under one of the world’s most iconic landmarks, the Eiffel Tower, at the Paris Games.
Zach shared more details on Flow FM about that experience, rubbing shoulders with sporting royalty in the Olympic Village, his results in Paris, and said he hopes to be "on the podium" at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
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