Hunter Valley mother Nicola Scaife wins first women's hot air balloon world championship
Updated
It is an activity most people associate with sunsets and sightseeing more than tournaments and trophies.
But hot air ballooning is a hotly contested sport, and New South Wales mother Nicola Scaife has won the inaugural women's world championship event in Leszno, Poland.
The 29-year-old represented Australia in marathon kayaking as a teenager, but said she "fell into hot air ballooning" almost a decade ago, initially for work and later for sport.
"I'd just become a university drop-out and I was desperately looking for a job and happened to go on a hot air balloon flight and just loved it straight away," she said.
"Luckily, my pilot for the morning, when I asked him if he had any jobs going, he said 'yes'.
"It was just one of those moments in life that just changes your direction."
Soon after taking on the job, Scaife met her husband Matthew, the current Australian men's champion, and discovered the traditionally male-dominated world of competitive ballooning.
A biennial world championship tournament has been running since the 1970s, but the women's event has not been staged before this year.
"At competitions it is usually the women who are looking after children or supporting their husbands, and it was brilliant to see the roles reversed and some amazing female talent in the skies," Scaife said.
Taking part in just her fourth ballooning competition ever, Scaife won the title by outscoring her rivals in a series of challenges, which involved pilots attempting to fly through designated points in the air and throw weighted markers at targets on the ground.
Making the win even more remarkable was the fact Scaife spent eight years battling bulimia.
The illness took hold soon after injury forced her to give up on her dream to become a world champion kayaker.
"An eating disorder is just completely debilitating and there were points where I didn't really feel like there was any future for me," she said.
"I couldn't even imagine being a normal person and functioning in society like everybody else.
"While I feel like I'm recovered now, I guess you're never fully recovered, but it's taken another six years to get to the point where I am now, where I'm feeling very good and happy and like those days are behind me.
"So to now be here, it's beyond anything I could have hoped for."
Scaife and her husband now operate tourist balloon flights in the Hunter Valley, where they live with their 14-month-old son.
They are planning to compete against each other, and more than 100 of the world's top balloon pilots, at the open world championships in Saga, Japan, in 2016.
Topics: other-sports, eating-disorders, newcastle-2300, poland, rothbury-2320
First posted
