NICHOLAS Jane

General
OCCUPATION
She works full-time as a doctor in Tauranga, New Zealand. Her siblings and fellow international slalom paddlers Ella and Bryden are also doctors. In mid-2019 she put her job on hold to focus on training for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, but when the Games were postponed by a year she returned to working as a doctor for the remainder of 2020. "It's sort of like balancing two full-time jobs but I'm just trying to do my best at both of them. It does take up a lot of time but I'm very well-versed in time management. I was training throughout university while I was studying medicine and then I was training when I was at work before I took time off so it's not completely unfamiliar territory. It was hard to accept [the Games being postponed] to begin with but I'm really lucky that I have a job that I could just go back to. There are more important things, in terms of health and happiness, which rank far higher than getting to the Olympics." (rnz.co.nz, 05 Jun 2020; newsroom.co.nz, 14 Apr 2020; olympianscookislands.org, 17 Jun 2019)

NEW ZEALAND TO THE COOK ISLANDS
Born in New Zealand, she represented her country of birth for 10 years before switching to compete for the Cook Islands in 2019. She qualifies for the Cook Islands through her father, and joined her brother Bryden and sister Ella in competing for the nation. "We were brought up as Cook Islanders, most of my family are in the Islands, we go back every year, we culturally identify as Islanders. For me I've been paddling for New Zealand for 10 years, and obviously there is only one spot for the [2020 Olympic] Games. [New Zealand slalom paddler] Luuka Jones, being that number one competitor and having won [Olympic] silver in Rio, put me in a difficult position about whether to pursue a place on the New Zealand team. The Cook Islands are hugely supportive of me, they want me to be part of their team and encouraged me to switch nations with some financial support, so it worked out very well for me." (canoeicf.com, 16 Jun 2019)