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, with a mark of 57.42. Five weeks after the games Cecilia competed at the World Cup in Madrid, Spain finishing 9th.
Following the World Cup McIntosh came home to have her shoulder checked out by Doctors after it had been giving her grief for 8 months leading into and during the games & World Cup. Scans showed McIntosh needed surgery but due to the fact that she was the only B qualifier for Australia for the upcoming 2004 Athens Olympic Games the surgeon Greg Hoy tried to do as little as possible to not hamper her preparations for the Olympics. But 3 months to go before Athens and the pain was too much and Cecilia just couldn't get a decent pre-departure throw out and needed to go back into surgery for a full shoulder reconstruction meaning she would miss the 2004 Olympic Games. Ten months later saw her have more complications with the shoulder forcing her to go in for surgery yet again. Trying desperately hard to return to her best and qualify for the 2006 Melbourne, Australia Commonwealth Games Cecilia just couldn't get over the shoulder injury that had plagued her for 4 years. She then left the sport because of the problems with her shoulder.