Ellie Beer

After Stanford, Griffith University produces the most Olympians in the world. The facilities are excellent, and for outdoor sports the weather is unusually fine. But for Ellie Beer, one of the Gold Coast Olympians, who grew up in Palm Beach, it’s about something else.

“You can tell in my voice,” Ellie says, at the Griffith running track. “The Gold Coast shapes my mindset. Excitement, enjoyment, smiling all the time. When I travel overseas and people ask where I’m from, when I say the Gold Coast, they go, ‘We get the place by your whole persona — your happiness.’ I think that reputation is what is bringing more people here, to build that same persona in themselves.”

Ellie is a 400m sprinter who represented Australia at the Paris and Tokyo Olympics, and at the World Championship in Doha.

Getting up early, working hard, striving to be the best at something feels natural to Ellie. Her father is from New Zealand and her mother is from Torquay. “They chose the Gold Coast because they thought it would be the best place to raise me. From little me to me up until now, I couldn’t be more privileged. You see it everywhere, in anyone who’s lived here or moved here.”

Ellie shines with unpretentious ambition, and the genuineness she says exemplifies the Gold Coast. “It isn’t just through my running,” she says. “You see that Gold Coaster spirit in my partner’s business, my dad’s business, my mum being a police officer. In my coach who grew his business here and has helped and encouraged me to pursue my Olympic dream in Tokyo, Paris, and hopefully more.”

Like any Olympian, Ellie has choices. She could live and train anywhere. “There were opportunities to go overseas,” she says. “But being here at Griffith University — the track, the gym — and building networks at the uni and through other runners is helping me build career aspirations outside of running. That’s what happens here, with all the opportunity around. I really want to do something that involves helping people.”

While her overseas mates know the Gold Coast best for the beaches, Ellie talks even more about the entrepreneurial culture and career opportunities. She comes back, again and again, to the Gold Coast mindset, which has something to do with the early morning.

And, of course, the beaches. She thinks of the surf club where, at five years old, at daybreak, she met her best friend. She thinks of her family.

“Going down to the beach at sunrise and seeing my dad, who formed this amazing paddling group after he retired. Just sitting there, coffee in hand, watching the sun come up, all the boys heading into the surf, chatting. Just being able to walk from my house straight down to the beach and experience that.”

“It makes you feel a little emotional, honestly, when you realise how lucky we are to live here.”