Tilly Oliver-Chambers with her four gold medals, three for swimming and one for cross country. Photos by Zoe Hunter
Young Tilly Oliver-Chambers nervously steps up onto the starting block, looks at the packed crowd around her, and screams as loud as she can: “It’s good guys, I’ve got this!”
As if she’s hiding gills and flippers, the 12-year-old dives into the pool and swims and swims, all the way to a gold medal. The crowd at Baywave Aquatic & Leisure Centre in Mount Maunganui goes wild.
On Monday night, young Tilly from Helensville Primary School caused quite the ruckus in a 50m freestyle race at the Zespri AIMS Games – an annual week-long sports tournament for intermediate-aged students featuring nearly 13,000 athletes from more than 390 schools across Aotearoa and overseas.
Tilly is 12 years old and has Down syndrome. She is unstoppable – winning four gold medals at the AIMS Games this week, three for swimming and one for cross country.
Swimming at the 2024 AIMS Games had 488 athletes from 157 schools racing over 3,679 individual races in three days. There is a multi-class section featuring swimmers with intellectual and physical disabilities.
“We had two young ladies bring the house down last night at swimming,” AIMS swimming event manager, Bronwen Radford, said. “Two young ladies with intellectual disabilities took the blocks and swam the 50 free and I don’t think in all my years at swimming I have seen a complex so electric when they swam, let alone the noise level when they finished,” she said.
“It was humbling to see everyone around stop to watch.” One of those young ladies was Jaida Reid from Tauranga Special School, who also took part in the cross country event. The other young lady was Tilly, who said she felt “nervous and quite scared” listening to the Baywave crowd roar, “but I was smiling a lot cause of my swimming and I love being in a crowd like that.”
Tilly initially started swimming simply to keep safe around water. Now, she trains at Northern Arena once a week. Local instructor Cara Emirali held a few training sessions with Tilly in the lead up to AIMS. Tilly also trains by herself twice a week before school at Parakai Springs.
Now she is a multi gold medalist in her first ever competition and hopes to enter more to keep her streak going. If Tilly could swim anywhere in the world – pool, lake or ocean – she said she’d choose Invercargill.
Tilly taking part in the cross country. Photo by Zach Quin
Tilly’s inspiration is Cameron Leslie, a Kiwi Paralympic swimmer who recently placed fourth in both the 50m freestyle and backstroke at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. “I wanna be like him.”
Outside of swimming, Tilly enjoys “baking with my dad, food shopping, hanging out with my friends, school, sport, AIMS Games, and visiting my sister in Australia”.
Tilly’s mum, Meghan, said: “Tilly would’ve loved to have more girls to race against and make more friends. It’s a great opportunity for all kids with disabilities to come down and give it a go.”
Tilly and her mum couldn’t leave the AIMS Games without thanking her new fans. They’ve found everyone to be “really supportive and inclusive”. “Thank you to my school, I love that they came down to support,” Tilly said.
