Alice Tait - 'I'm racing to save lives'

THE OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALLIST SWAPS HER SWIMMING CAP FOR SCRUBS

- Courtney Greatrex

The nation cheered on Alice Tait as she clinched multiple gold medals for Australia at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Alice, known by her maiden name Mills, then went on to make her country proud at the Beijing Olympics four years later, smashing world records as she went.

When her career in sport came to an end in 2012, she hung up her swimming cap and retired to an even more purposeful career as a nurse. Today, the 37-year-old mother-of-two works in paediatric operating theatres at Queensland Children’s Hospital.

To mark DonateLife Week, a campaign encouraging Australians to register to be an organ and tissue donor, Alice is sharing her story and asking households to talk about joining the donor list before it’s too late.

“The first step is to have the conversation,” she tells WHO. “There is no right or wrong choice, the discussion is worth having. Registering is such a quick process, my husband did it while we were waiting for the kettle to boil.”

For Alice, becoming a paediatric theatre nurse was an obvious choice when her swimming career came to an end.