Glamour girl. Golden girl. Party girl. Olympic hero Stephanie Rice has had to wear all the media’s tags. Yet, as The Weekly discovers, none of the labels fits this essentially normal Aussie girl.
With the Australian flag billowing brilliantly behind her, Stephanie Rice lifts the hem of her Grecian goddess gown and expertly slips into sky-high stilettos. Cue a wind machine and the 20-year-old’s hair lifts from her shoulders buoyantly as the photographer instructs her to look this way and then the other.
It’s as if the impressive young woman posing is a veteran model, confident enough to stare down a camera like a pro, rather than someone who spends every day chasing a black line up and down a pool. Yet when the wind machine sends an errant strand of hair up Stephanie’s nose, resulting in her sneezing with enough gusto to send the belt of her gown pinging open and flying to the floor below, Stephanie reminds us, as she doubles over in hysterics, that she is, in fact, a young girl full of fun.
It’s good to see the swimming star enjoying herself. For someone whose life is a disciplined regimen of training, dieting and more training, in between keeping up with her sponsor and media commitments, belly laughs are a welcome respite. Yet Stephanie isn’t complaining. She knows that this is her time and is not about to waste a minute of it.
It’s hard to imagine now that, only a year ago, Stephanie Rice was hardly known. Sure, swim fans had noticed the teen from Brisbane clocking up some impressive times in the pool, or were aware of her first love relationship with fellow swimmer Eamon Sullivan, or that she was exceptionally attractive, “glamour girl”. Yet the glamour girl tag was replaced with “golden girl” in Beijing last year when Stephanie took home three gold medals: in the 200m and 400m medley, and as a member of the winning 4 x 200m relay team.
Following her victories, Stephanie was allowed her first break from training since she was 14 and decided to let her hair down and celebrate her success. The result, thanks to the publication in the press of candid photos of her enjoying herself, was another, far less flattering, monicker for the swimmer — that of party girl — which appears to have eclipsed even her sporting fame.
“I have always hoped to, one day, be someone who people respected, so getting all that great media I had in Beijing was awesome, as that was the person I wanted to be,” Stephanie explains of her bittersweet Olympics aftermath during a break in the photo shoot. “That time-frame [after Olympic success] was the only time I got to go out and have a good time.”
To read the full interview with Stephanie Rice, pick up your copy of the February issue of The Weekly — out now!
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