Australian Idol Top 30 participant John Van Beek is rocked by an illness this week that could threaten his chance to win the competition.
“I started to feel really sick,” John, 19, tells TV WEEK. “It was really tricky – I wasn’t in the best shape.”
With his fate on the show hanging in the balance, John made every effort not to let things get the better of him, which he did by drawing on what he learnt from his time as an elite gymnast.
“I started bringing all these things from gymnastics over,” he recalls. “Keeping my mental focus in check and only focusing on the things that I can control.”
After years training as a gymnast, John’s life flipped upside down when a horrific accident pulled him from the sport.
“A week out from nationals, I landed on the frame of a trampoline,” John says. “I hyperextended and dislocated my arm. Of course it hurt, but there was [also] lots of anger because now I was missing out on my dream.”
John had often listened to music while training – and his dream switched from being an athlete to a musician.
“I found this spark in music,” he says. “I started dancing, I started playing instruments. An awareness awoke inside me that music is an actual career that I can do.”
Now, the Idol contestant loves to busk on the streets, and doing it has brought him so much joy and pulled him from that dark place when he didn’t know what his future held.
“I have struggled with a bit of mental health [issues] in my time,” John says. “That’s because I was taking a break from music. When I go for a busk, I get that joy from everyone else.”
Will John be able to channel that joy and keep it together as he battles to overcome his illness and impress the Idol judges and the pubic enough to stay in the competition?
Australian Idol airs Monday and Tuesday, 7.30pm, and Sunday, 7pm on Channel Seven
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