Five years ago Tiana tried boxing for the first time. Now she’s off to the Olympics

Five years ago, at 25, Tiana Echegaray sat back in her office in Sydney and wondered what she was doing with her life. During the week, she was completely unmotivated in her job in music licensing and spent her weekends at the pub drinking with friends, before starting the cycle again.

Echegaray described herself as a “chubby kid” at school, who hated running and had never done any competitive sport apart from the odd game of social netball with friends. She decided to walk into a boxercise class at the gym after work to gain fitness and confidence. The decision changed her life.

Within six months of taking up boxing seriously, she had won her first NSW title and last November, qualified for the Olympics. In just over two months she will compete at her first Games in Paris, aged 30.

“I just knew what I was doing before in life wasn’t making me happy,” Echegaray said. “I was just training because it felt good and I didn’t ask any questions about it. I was just like ‘this is good, I’m just going keep doing it’ and I didn’t think about where it was going to lead me or anything like that.”

Echegaray recently watched old footage of herself at her first classes, describing her attempts at punching as “terrible.” She stayed in boxing because of the community she eventually found at No Quarter Boxing Gym in Alexandria where she still trains under her coach Anton Shalom. She found friends from every walk of life at the gym who supported her and encouraged her to try her first amateur fight as she made rapid progress through dedication.

“When I had my first fight (in 2021), it was kind of like one of those weird adrenaline hits, it’s like when you go on like a scary ride and you’re like, ‘oh, let’s do it again’,” Echegaray said. “It was just like that and yeah, I was 1000 per cent scared.

Tiana Echegaray took up boxing during Covid to keep fit. She will now be competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics for Australia.

“I couldn’t rely on anyone else, it wasn’t like a team sport and there’s a weird balance of being controlled in a really terrifying situation and then winning. I was like, oh, this is good, this is good.”

Echegaray won her first Australian title in 2022, following up with another a year later, having little idea of the significance of being the best boxer in the country at her weight class. The Olympics were never on her horizon until she attended a national team camp in January 2023 where the potential of booking an Olympic spot in Paris was first discussed with her.

“We basically had a meeting about what the pathway was going to look like if you wanted to go to the Olympics and I was like ‘how am I even in this conversation right now? What do you mean?’. I never thought about the Olympics, I was watching them in lockdown,” Echegaray said.

“It was pretty crazy because I was like, ‘oh shit, this is where it’s leading me’. I did not see it all.”

Echegaray has sacrificed a lot to make the Olympics. She trained full-time and relied on sponsorship from local businesses, friends and family to help support her travel and training costs while competing. She has also battled injuries, including scratched corneas on her eyes from punches that left her unable to lie down without feeling like she was blinking slowly through a sackful of sand and grit.

In November, Echegaray – who is of Cook Islands heritage – made the Olympics after winning gold in the Pacific Games, winning a unanimous points decision over Tonga’s Hainite Kayla Tuitupou in the women’s 54kg division.

“It was probably some of the biggest relief I’ve ever felt in my life, honestly, just because I’d worked so hard for everything up to that moment, that whole year,” Echegaray said.

“I’ve just been through so much and in terms of ups and downs in the sport, like winning and losing, and some days you feel like on top of the world the next day, you just feel like shit, you’re just getting bashed, it’s such a rollercoaster to try and manage. I just felt so incredibly happy and just had relief, like I did what I said I was going to do”

Echegaray last month flew to Colorado Springs in the United States to train and compete with her 11 teammates – including five other women, Australia’s biggest Olympic female boxing contingent to date. She knows that she is fighting for something bigger than personal glory.

Tiana Echegaray training at No Quarter Gym in Alexandria.

“It becomes bigger than yourself because you start impacting the people around you and I didn’t even think that that would be the case because initially I was just working on myself to make myself feel better,” Echegaray said.

“Now I start to see the impact on the people around me and then it’s gotten to the point where now it’s not even about me, it feels like I just want to make everyone else proud and particularly my family, my friends, my coach. We’ve all worked so hard to be where we are.

“It’s just like everyone’s riding the wave with me and I’m trying to get on the podium, not just for me, but for everyone behind me.”

Echegaray is fully focused on her Olympic dream, but is resolute that this will be her first and last time competing in the Games. She wants to stay involved in boxing, not as a professional fighter, but instead working in the community that initially attracted her to the sport.

“I have this small little window to try and do as much as I can and I’m really just fully committed to it and I’m like, ‘this is it, I’m not going to go to the Olympics again’,” Echegaray said.

“I’m so glad I made that choice (to commit). I’d be so unhappy to still be sitting on my arse all day and typing away on a computer.

“It’s kind of scary thinking about what I’m going to do after but it’s also not; I feel like I’m still going to be involved in the sport. I’m still going to do coaching and there’s so much you can do on the community level. It really impacts people’s lives.”

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