Life looks pretty different these days for Ellia Green. At the tail end of last year, the Olympic athlete announced his retirement from sport after a glittering decade-long career. Then, in February, he and partner Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts welcomed their first child, a daughter, Waitui. Now, instead of his days revolving around training, Green’s focus is on his family. It’s a shift that’s brought him a simple, satisfying happiness.
“My weekday routine includes waking up to my baby Waitui and making my beautiful partner, Vanessa, a coffee,” he says. “My joy is in making Waitui laugh and watching every Toy Story movie ever made on repeat. I cook the girls dinner at night, do my gym session and then sleep.”
As well as Vanessa and the bub, Green’s constant companion during the day is music. From “the moment I wake up until I go to sleep”, Green says, he has Spotify on. It could be anything from R&B slow jams to UK drill or 80s soul on the speakers – or maybe even a bit of Caribbean dancehall. “My taste in music is so varied,” Green says. “I’m all over the place, but I love all of it.”
For Green and family, music makes the daily routine a little brighter.
“I play music while I make breakfast and when I go for walks with my baby,” he says. “When I bathe her, we listen to our favourite songs too.”
Song has been a source of comfort for Green since the high-pressure days of competing in rugby sevens, the sport in which he won a gold medal at the Rio Olympic Games in 2016. The 29-year-old, who was born in Suva, Fiji, and raised on the New South Wales Central Coast, first played rugby for Australia in 2013 after an early career in athletics.
“Music has the power to balance my mood for sure,” Green says. “It hypes me up in the gym and can calm me down when I’m feeling anxious. Music can take me back to a special memory of a time long past. It helps me connect to that moment all over again.”
These days, Green reaches mostly for tracks that help him start his day right. “Usually, I listen to retro soul or acoustic soul feel-good music that puts a spring in my step,” he says. That could mean a little Alicia Keys or J Cole, a throwback hit from the Eagles or an adrenaline shot care of UK grime don Skepta.
Green and Turnbull-Roberts have played Waitui music since she was in the womb. “I also play the guitar, so we make up songs for her and sing to her every day,” Green says.
Since he became a parent, everything Green does is motivated by his love for his baby girl. In August, parenthood inspired his bravest act yet: publicly affirming his gender identity. That made Green only the second ever Olympian to come out as a trans man.
“One of the main reasons why I have decided to be open about myself is because of my beautiful baby,” Green said in an Instagram post.
So does having a new baby dominate his days?
“It does, and I’m so thankful for that,” Green says.
He hopes his decision to come out publicly will inspire others to be their authentic selves.
“It is possible to live a life as your true self,” he says.
