Cecilia McIntosh

Cecilia McIntosh (born 21 June 1979) is an Australian athlete who won a silver medal in the javelin throw at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, represented Australia in bobsled at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, was a runner-up at the 1997 Australian Weightlifting Championships and is an Australian rules footballer who played for the Collingwood Football Club in the AFL Women's competition (AFLW).

Early life McIntosh was born in Victoria, Australia and hails from the eastern Melbourne suburb of Nunawading. She attended Eumemmerring Secondary College in Fountain Gate, Melbourne.

Athletics McIntosh first stepped onto the world stage in 1996 for the World Junior Track & Field Championships in Sydney Australia placing 19th as a 17yo. Two years later in 1998 she qualified for her 2nd World Junior team to compete in Annecy, France where she went into the Championships ranked 4th with the hopes of finishing on the podium, but it wasn't to be as McIntosh snapped and dislocated her elbow on the first throw of the qualifying round. At the time not knowing how bad the injury was she continued to throw in all 3 rounds. Following straight after the World Juniors was the Commonwealth games Australian Qualifying Championships where Cecilia was the 3rd ranked Australian and because was still a junior athlete was highly enough ranked that if she could just make top 3 with a decent throw would have made her first Australian Commonwealth games team at the age of 19. But due to the seriousness of the elbow injury she endured at the worlds she could not compete and withdrew from the competition. On arrival back to Melbourne a few days later scans showed how bad an injury she had and went straight into surgery with Greg Hoy for an Elbow reconstruction.

Planning to make a comeback for the Sydney Olympics McIntosh worked hard but was faced with some complications towards returning to competition meaning she wasn't able to get in good enough form before the Olympic trials. Sitting in the stands at the Sydney Olympic Games Cecilia vowed she would make it to the big stage. In the coming 2 years in the 2001/2002 seasons saw her take on a grueling schedule and train 6 days a week for a total of 10 sessions a week, this paid off as she went from being a 54m Javelin thrower to a 57m thrower and the new Australian National Open Champion. In a lead up meet to the Commonwealth Games McIntosh threw a Personal Best of 58.95m at a meet in Szombathy, Hungary to rank her 4th in the Commonwealth not 2 weeks out from the games. She competed at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in javelin where she won a silver medal, She then left the sport because of the problems with her shoulder. In 2008, she earned the league's best-and-fairest award.

AFL Women's McIntosh was drafted by with the 123rd pick in the 2016 AFL Women's draft. She made her AFLW debut in round 1, 2017, in the club and the league's inaugural match at IKON Park against . In May 2017, Collingwood signed her for the 2018 season. In May 2018, McIntosh was re-signed by Collingwood for the 2019 season. At the end of the 2019 season, McIntosh retired from AFLW following three seasons at Collingwood that included 17 matches.

She continued to play state-league football, moving to play with Essendon in the VFL Women's league in 2019, and came third in the league best and fairest Lambert-Pearce Medal that year.

Statistics

17 1 0 64 57 121 19 51 0.1 0.0 3.8 3.4 7.1 1.1 3.0

Weightlifting McIntosh has competed in weightlifting, where she finished second at the Victorian championships and second at the national championships. In 2009, she took up the sport again, moved to the United States and trained full-time in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics. When in Australia, she based her training in Ringwood, Melbourne.

Following the first two heats of the women's two person bobsleigh event, her sled was in nineteenth place out of twenty-one sleds. The first run had a time of 54.85 seconds and the second run had a time of 54.66 seconds. Despite finishing 21st after their third run, their sled finished nineteenth overall at the conclusion of their fourth and final run, after one team failed to finish and another was disqualified.