In 2018 Toomey won the women’s 58kg weightlifting gold medal at the Commonwealth Games on Australia‘s Gold Coast. Toomey won that event with the last lift of the competition, a 114kg clean and jerk that gave her the gold by just 1kg over second placed Canadian Tali Darsigny.

Her potential road to Beijing may be just as unique. In December of 2020 she announced she had been recruited to join a two-man bobsleigh team with fellow Australian Ashleigh Werner, an experienced driver who has been competing since 2016 and was formerly a rugby sevens player. It was actually Werner who reached out to her as she was looking for a new partner.

Toomey, who first headed to South Korea to train with Werner, is a brake woman which means she applies the brakes at the end of the race and is the second to get in after the push start.

At the time of the call from Werner, Toomey was in Nashville, however her gym was closed to Covid-19 restrictions, so she headed to Asia and went through quarantine with husband and coach Shane Orr.

The pair won their first two races in South Korea in February. Now the two are in Lake Placid, training for the start of the 2021-22 Bobsleigh World Cup, which is run by the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation.

The circuit will feature a number of races in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, ending in the middle of January. Winners of their respective divisions will book tickets to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.