The Australian athlete repeats her triumph in Tokyo 2021. She is very outspoken about her faith:. “My heart for sport is to see revival”.
Australian Christian high jumper, Nicola Olyslagers (formerly McDermott), won silver for Australia at the Paris Olympics. / [link]Australian Olympic Team[/link]
Nicola Olyslagers (formerly McDermott), a Christian high jumper, won silver for Australia at the Paris Olympics, repeating her triumph in Tokyo 2021.
The Ukrainian world record holder Yaroslava Mahuchich won the gold. She and Olyslagers were the only ones to clear 1.98m, but the Australian could not clear 2.00m until the third attempt.
Two bronze medals went to Eleanor Patterson (Australia) and Iryna Geraschenko (Ukraine), who both cleared 1.95 metres.
Olyslagers is very outspoken about her faith. After winning the silver medal, she gave glory to God on her Instagram account.
She has several biblical statements tattooed on her body, and whenever she jumps, she writes a biblical reference on her wrist. This time it was 1 John 4:18.
For Olyslagers, jumping "is like being in a church. My worship might not be my singing, it’s in my feet jumping over a bar”, she told ABC Sport after her victory.
At every competition, she has her "little book of gold", as she calls it, with the inscription “For His Glory”.
In it, she evaluates all her jumps and scribbles words and pictures during training and competition, as well as Bible verses.
Her faith also pours out at the peak of her approach to the jump, when she closes her eyes and talks to God, taking a deep breath and clenching her fists.
Written in small black print on the shoes of the Olympic silver medallist, is the word "revival", because “my heart and my vision for sport is to see revival”, said the high jumper.
“I believe that God can change anything and in sport I've seen so many athletes that get burnt out really easily and their identity is in sport. To see a revival in sport is to see people released and free from all of that, and see God move in sports so we see miracles that we've never seen before” , pointed out Olyslagers.
She recalled that "a few years ago God revived me; revived my love for the sport, revived my passion and revived my purpose for why I do what I do” .
“So when I jump every time I look at that word and think, 'All right, I'll put a bit more effort into this training session'”, added Olyslagers.
The athlete tells on her website that “the satisfaction that I jump and live by was once performance-driven”, but that changed when she came to know Jesus.
Since then, she wants to share it with all, and “the high jump offers a platform to make the unbiased, constant love of the King known”.
Olyslagers, along with other Christian athletes, has co-founded the ministry Everlasting Crowns ministry. She has conducted Bible studies and meetings all over the world.
The ministry aims to “is to see fellow athletes transformed by Jesus’s perfect love, planted in churches, and discipled to be a blessing to every place they are sent”.
“Our passion is gathering sports people across local and international events, forming a network of believers. Our hope is that they rise up, to not only have faith but compete with an eternal perspective”, they add.
In an Instagram video of British hurdler Cindy Sember, Olyslagers can be seen praising God together with a group of other athletes in the Olympic Village.
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