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Hey there...
My name's Liam Twomey, and welcome to Team Twomey. This is a space I have created for a few reasons. The first reason is to document my sporting adventures, the ups and downs, wins and losses and everything in between.
Secondly I hope this blog will be a place to help engage with the community, particularly as I plan to share with you my thoughts, ideas and values about the things that are truly important to me, from sport, training, family and my not-so-secret favourite thing…food!
Lastly, this page will be affiliated with my business which I am in the process of starting up. As a qualified swim instructor and certified Personal Trainer I will be using this platform to share my work life and the goals I have in both work and sport.
Now enough about the website and a bit more about my favourite topic…me! For those who don’t know me, I’m 24 years old and currently living in Bondi, Sydney, Australia.
I originally grew up in Carnegie, Melbourne with my family consisting of my Mum, Dad and older brother. In the year of 2000, at the age of 7 I was diagnosed with a Ewing Sarcoma cancer in my right leg. This discovery changed everything. It led to spending close to 12 months in and out of The Royal Children’s Hospital receiving chemotherapy amongst other various procedures. In 2001, despite doctors' best efforts, I had my right leg amputated below the knee to stop the cancer spreading.
Today I don’t want to go into all the nitty gritty to my life. I just want to flesh out a bit of an idea for people who I am and why you might want to check out this page.
As I grew up I really struggled with my identity, of being an amputee, thinking I was different to everyone else, the black sheep to be brutally honest. Mix that lack of self-esteem with a big fake bravado; I was fairly out of control through my teenage years. I engaged in a lot of anti-social behaviour whether it was at school, or out in public. I let this behaviour and the thrill of it all leave me pretty burnt out. I was going nowhere fast at the tender age of 21.
Things shifted for me at this point, albeit very slowly, but they turned around. I got the opportunity not many people have and i was able to hit the restart button on my life, a fresh start. Within about 18 months of this change of direction I had turned my obsessive negative behaviours into a positive healthy passion. I had found the thing I was looking for and needed.
At 22, I was taught how to swim again, received a grant from the START Foundation for a new prosthetic to help further my sporting dreams and turned my focus onto sport, in particular, pushing myself to get to a place where I get the opportunity to represent my country on the world stage.
These days I’m training as a Para-Triathlete. I’m very fresh to the sport and the whole Triathlon world. I was supported by a few people whose opinion I trust to give it a go. Last November I began training for my first race in St Kilda in January in 2018. So far I’ve loved every minute of it, the training, the community, the races (despite a few memorable and not so memorable incidents).
Hopefully this brief introduction gives you a clear snapshot of me, myself and I. I plan to be writing a new blog once a month, where I will touch more on the stuff I’ve mentioned here in detail, such as the story behind Team Twomey, my fight with cancer and the battles that took place after it, what led to the turnaround in my life and how I live today, both in and out of training and racing.
Until next time…