The best things Lisa Curry has eaten at the Olympics

Plus the very Australian food she'd eat before competing.

Credit: Jiwon Kim

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Decades on, triple Olympian Lisa Curry still has fond memories of the food hall in the Olympic Village.

"The village has pretty much every food that you can imagine from around the world because it has to cater to the Bulgarian weightlifter and the tiny Australian gymnast, and everyone in between," Curry says. "The most fun at the Olympic Games is at the food court of the village."

The former competitive swimmer has participated in the 1980 games in Moscow, the 1984 games in Los Angeles and the 1992 games in Barcelona.

"Considering how old I am and how long ago my career was, there wasn't a great deal of information about food back then and I'm surprised that I swam as well as I did, considering what I ate back in those days," she says, adding that her knowledge of sports nutrition improved throughout her career.

Before a race, she'd usually eat scrambled eggs on toast with Vegemite. "I took my own Vegemite because that's what I've grown up on, that's what I trained on and that's what's worked well in my belly," she says.

While athletes have a strict diet before competing, she says that when they finished their races, they'd take full advantage of the food hall and what the host city had to offer.

"In Moscow, they had the most amazing ice cream, and I can still remember, I can still see it in my mind today. They were like rolls of vanilla ice cream rolled in this pastry. I probably had way too many of those, but that was our treat, and we enjoyed every morsel of it," she says.

In Barcelona, she remembers going out in the city after competing and seeing big pans of paella cooked on the streets, and wine flowing.

After the Moscow Olympics, at 18, she went on a backpacking trip with friends through Europe.

I can still see it in my mind today.

"Because we had no money, we would buy a French stick, then go to a supermarket and buy some ham and cheese. We would have a picnic under the Eiffel Tower with our French stick ham, cheese and Vegemite, and that was my favourite meal. It's a beautiful memory for us to have been able to have that picnic under the Eiffel Tower with something so simple."

Travelling and eating out can be expensive, but she worked out that if you shop at local supermarkets, you can buy great ingredients, like cheeses, crackers, dips, bread, ham and tomatoes, and have a picnic.

What Lisa Curry eats today

These days, Curry loves Mexican and Japanese cuisine. She likes healthy eating, without making it an obsession. She follows an 80/20 approach to eating; eating nutritious food 80 percent of the time and having more freedom than the remaining 20 percent.

She leaves most of the cooking to her husband. "I'm not a great cook, I don't particularly like it, so any meal that someone else cooks for me is a good meal," she says, adding that she enjoyed learning how to cook new dishes as a guest of Adam Liaw on The Cook Up.

"I guess cooking can be simple if you know how to do it. Butterfly is simple to me because I know how to do it, but to someone else, it's very complicated. So when someone teaches you the basics of cooking, it actually makes it more enjoyable."