This year, 26 district sporting legends are being inducted to the hall of fame, honour roll andjunior honour roll categories in the Greater Shepparton Sports Hall of Fame. The News is featuring stories on each of the inductees in the lead-up to the induction ceremony on August 6. Today News reporter Liam Nash speaks to Emma O'Keeffe, who is being inducted to the hall of fame.
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Two minutes is all that separates mediocrity and marvel in the art of sport aerobics.
Which means Emma O’Keeffe, Shepparton’s finest exponent of the form, has spent a lifetime ensuring a foot is never out of place.
After all, how else could she have become world champion?
An obscure, but strenuous, variant of gymnastics, even O’Keeffe herself struggles to find words to explain the craft she has shed blood, sweat and tears for to become so well-versed in.
“It’s really hard to explain to people, because it’s similar to gymnastics, but there’s no equipment,” O'Keeffe said.
“It’s bodyweight, fitness, strength and flexibility — showing that all in a two-minute routine and making it look like it doesn’t hurt.
“You get marked artistically, so you’ve got to do it with a smile on your face.”
The fluidity of Baryshnikov paired with Brunson’s poker face is what’s needed to succeed in the sport.
And O’Keeffe has had her fair share of mastery.
Her love affair with sport aerobics dates back to 2002, when a lively Goulburn Valley Grammar School troupe shook the auditorium with a captivating display of mayhem and pageantry.
“Straight away it just intrigued me from the start,” she said.
“I couldn’t look away — and since that day I’ve never looked back.”
Nineteen years without an utterance of a volte-face began from that day on.
Sculpting her body to suit the sport’s attached rigour has been a daily mountain to climb, and when it comes time to prepare for a state, national or international event, her usual Kilimanjaro grows to become K2.
“When I’m heading to a world championships, I’m training five times a week here in the studio, plus four times a week with a personal trainer,” she said.
“I’d also do a bit of running on the side as well.
“It really ramps up, but it is just to get to that level of fitness you need for a crazy, intense two-minute routine.”
Possessing an astounding drivetrain, O’Keeffe twisted and gyrated her way to the world stage where, in 2012, she reached the pinnacle her entire sporting life had been angled toward scaling.
Up until that point O’Keeffe was accustomed to being a “bridesmaid” of the sport, where that elusive gold medal came agonisingly close on too many accounts.
But in front of the judges in New Zealand’s capital, everything clicked.
“It felt rewarding; you could feel the hard work on the stage,” she said.
“The routine’s easier — not that it is easy — but I felt really prepared standing back stage.
“That was always my goal, standing backstage and knowing whether I come first or last, I’ve done everything I can. That was what happened in Wellington.”
Tasting the champagne outside her home nation came with a hint of irony not lost on O’Keeffe.
Though the location hardly mattered; she’d finally got her hands on a crown she'd been stretching her neck out to wear since a girl.
“To get to the world stage, that was always my dream,” she said.
“I remember being 13 years old and saying I wanted to represent Australia one day in this sport.
“I think Dad had his hopes for me in basketball or tennis which I wasn’t too bad at, but there was something about this sport that captivated me.”
Since that storied day in 2012, O’Keeffe never let her foot fall off the pedal.
She hails from a family of pioneers and harnesses the mightiest of self-beliefs to stay hungry throughout the soaring highs and nether lows of her sporting career.
Now she is ingraining that animalistic fervour into the next crop of sports aerobics hopefuls at her studio, Peak Physique.
“I believe that if you really want it, I don’t see why you can’t have it,” she said.
“I say to my kids it took me nine years to win my first gold medal — from there it was pretty consistent, but it took me that long to get there.
“If I did the sport just for the gold medal, I wouldn’t still be in it.”
Aspirations to scale the podium with students in tow has transcended into O’Keeffe’s dogged dream.
Within the walls of her temple, she is bent on taking them to a point where Shepparton's best and brightest can too stand draped in the pride of the Australian flag, as she has done in years gone by.
“My ultimate goal would be to compete at the worlds with my kids alongside me,” she said.
“I see little bits in them that I remember; being at that age feeling defeated, but knowing not to give up. I love that process and the journey of the sport.”