Olympic Diving Champ Chantelle Newbery
Chantelle Lee Newbery is an Australian diver and an Olympic champion who was born May 6, 1977 in Melbourne, Victoria. During the Summer Olympics in 2004, she won the gold medal in the diving event, and in 2006, she became the 22nd athlete to be named in the “Best of the Best” by the Australian Institute of Sport Awards.
During her career as a professional diver, Newbury’s first success in international events was at the World Aquatics Championships in Perth, Australia in 1998, where she took the a bronze medal in the 3-meter springboard event. Later in the same year, she became a Commonwealth Champion when she won the gold medal in the 1-meter springboard event at the Commonwealth Games that were held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the same event, she also won the silver medal in the 3-meter springboard competition.
Newbery finished 4th place in the synchronized 3-meter springboard event at the Sydney Summer Olympic Games in 2000. However, the highlight of Newberry’s diving career was when she won the gold medal for the 10-meter platform event at the Athens Summer Olympic Games in 2004, ahead of fellow Australian, Loudy Tourky, and China’s Lao Lishi. Her career is also special in a way that she is one of only a few women who have achieved Olympic success after they became mothers. Newbery was inducted into the Australian Institute of Sport Awards’ “Best of the Best” in 2005.
While she was pregnant with her first child, Newbery took time away from diving, but returned soon after giving birth to her son, Jet, in 2002. She married Robert Newbery in 2004 with whom she competed with at the Athens Olympics as husband and wife. In 2009, she told the “Woman’s Day” Australian magazine that she was admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital due to severe depression, where she even attempted suicide. She then put herself on diversion programs for recovery.