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Wobbles spans the physical, psychological and spiritual growth of an athlete from childhood into her stature as a fierce, Olympic competitor.
When Nadine Neumann decides that she wants to be an Olympic swimmer at age eight, she trades a normal life of school friends and parties for the rigours of elite sports training.
With acute honesty, wisdom and humour, Nadine spins readers through the heartaches and loneliness of a different kind of adolescence. Enduring and overcoming Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a life-threatening accident and imposed breaks from her passion, Nadine pursues her dream as only an Olympian can – with the rarest of intensity and focus.
Sweeping from Perth to Germany, India to Sydney, Brisbane to Hong Kong, the reader is invited along this journey of a remarkable young woman who stops at nothing to achieve her goals.
Nadine began swimming when she was seven years old and by the time she was eight, she knew she wanted to be an Olympian. She overcame Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at the age of 15, only to have her dream of an Olympic berth in Barcelona shattered by a broken neck. Nadine fought back to achieve her goal, swimming at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games in the 200m Breaststroke where she came 6th in the final in a personal best time. She went on to captain the Australian Swimming Team at the 1998 Commonwealth Games and 1999 Pan Pacific Championships. On retiring from competitive swimming, Nadine had to completely re-define her life. She struggled with depression for five years while studying for dual teaching qualifications (Primary and Secondary English) and working in PR & Marketing. In 2004 she began teaching English at high school and it was then that she began seriously shaping the memoir she had started in 1999 as part of her university degree. Since Nadine's story captured the attention of the media in 1996 she has enjoyed success as a motivational speaker on both the corporate and schools circuits. She says that one of her greatest joys is "connecting with an audience and feeling that my experiences, in some small way, might help inspire them." Nadine lives in Newcastle, NSW with her husband and one-year-old son. She spends her days cleaning up after her little boy and trying to find time to work on her next writing projects: a historical novel based on the lives of her grandparents (French/Jewish and German) and a picture book that uses the "Humpty Dumpty" nursery rhyme as a basis for an exploration of bullying. She has plans for four more novels beyond this.
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