Former Tongan Olympian Noelani Day is taking her experience from the pool to the boardroom, using her journey as an island athlete to advocate for greater inclusion of small nations in future Olympic Games planning.
Raised from the age of 5 in Holonga on Tongatapu, Day made history as the first swimmer raised in Tonga to compete at an Olympic Games, overcoming significant barriers to represent her country at both Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.
She is now based in Los Angeles, where she has transitioned into a role with the LA28 Olympic Organising Committee through its Athlete Fellowship Program.
From lagoon training to the Olympic stage
Day’s rise to the Olympics is a story that has come to symbolise the unique challenges faced by athletes from Pacific Island nations.
Growing up in Tonga, Day trained largely in the ocean because there was no Olympic-sized pool, often swimming laps between wharves and reefs with makeshift facilities.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, her preparation for Tokyo 2020 even included sessions in her family’s backyard lagoon, a stark contrast to the high-performance centres available to many of her international competitors.
“There’s different challenges that you have to face growing up in the islands,” she said previously, reflecting on the limited resources and pathways available to aspiring elite athletes.
Those realities, she says, are shared by many competitors from small island nations, where access to facilities, coaching and funding is often limited.
Bringing athlete perspective to Olympic planning
Now working within the Olympic movement itself, Day is determined to ensure that those challenges are better understood at the highest levels.
She joined the LA28 Athlete Fellowship after learning about the opportunity during her final year at the University of Southern California, describing it as a natural next step after her competitive career.
The program is designed to integrate former Olympians and Paralympians into Games operations, giving them hands-on roles across multiple departments and ensuring athlete perspectives are included in planning.
For Day, it also presented an opportunity to address a gap she noticed after moving to the United States.
“Once I moved to Los Angeles, I realised that there weren’t a lot of Pacific Islanders in higher education spaces and also in the business side of sport,” she said.
Her role now focuses on amplifying the voices of nations like Tonga, countries that are often represented on the field of play but rarely in decision-making spaces.
“There are a lot of smaller nations that participate in the Olympics and it’s really important to make sure that our voices are heard during the planning phase,” she said.
Advocating for fairer competition conditions
Day believes that meaningful inclusion starts well before the Opening Ceremony. Drawing on her own experience, she is pushing for more equitable support systems to be considered during Games planning, from access to coaching and equipment to broader athlete services.
“We don’t have a lot of the resources that our competitors have access to,” she said.
“When you’re planning for the Games… how can we make sure athletes from these smaller countries are able to compete at the best of their ability? Does that look like additional coaches, or making sure they get the proper gear they need?”
Her perspective reflects broader challenges faced across the Pacific, where limited funding, smaller populations and geographic isolation can restrict athlete development pathways and international representation.
Beyond advocacy, Day hopes her journey will inspire young Pacific Islanders to see sport as more than just competition — but as a pathway to education, travel and career opportunities.
“When you join a sport, it’s more than just practice every day,” she said.
“It’s about understanding there are so many other opportunities out there in the world that you can go for.”
Source: ABC
