By BLAKE METCALF-HOLT
MOE is home to one of the 12 best young plumbers on the planet.
Sebastian Battista travelled to Lyon, France last September for the 47th WorldSkills International Championships, finishing 12th out of 26 countries that competed in plumbing and heating.
Battista was also awarded with a Medallion of Excellence for achieving a total mark of 702 – one of just 145 Construction and Building participants to receive the honour.
Taking place at the gargantuan OL Stadium, 1400 competitors from almost 70 countries took centre stage across 59 different skills and trades. The atmosphere was something that stood out for Battista, all while he was trying to focus on completing his project in a timely and neatly manner.
“Going from training in here (Moe work shed) or even Holmesglen (Chadstone mock-up competition) there’s not that many people watching you, there’s not a lot going on around you and then over there I think they said they had over 250,000 people come through, it’s a big thing,” he told the Express.
“I’m pretty happy with how I’ve gone and how far I’ve gone and what I’ve done at that level, I don’t think I could ask for much more out of myself on the day.
“Everything came together the way I wanted it to, it was just that everyone (above me) got there’s together a bit better.”
Given a shorter period of time to prepare for the global competition, Battista worked twice as hard – after work, after TAFE – just to get to that high a level.
“(I got given) past competitions to practice on and you do them about four days a week equivalent to training, fulltime on weekends and after hours you got to come down and do the training,” he said.
“They give you a marking guide, plans will be in different stages. They’ll just pick it at random which plumbing level, different measurements (it will be at) and then you get it in stages.”
While he did have a certain amount of nerves when arriving to Lyon, Battista, who was into his fourth year as an apprentice then, said that while in the thick of it there wasn’t much difference to the other national and mock competitions he had done in anticipation.
“I went into it feeling pretty good… it was just getting use to the different benders, the different tools, different cutters, everything was different that I had to work with, so that was mainly the big learning curve,” he said.
“It’s not so different that you don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s just different enough to annoy you and throw you out that little bit, and of course, two (millimetres off) and you’re only scoring half marks, you had to be spot on which was the issue.
“But we got around it, we had the familiarisation day up there to get used to it and figure out the kinks, we used all the time we could and (I) did the best I could.”
Battista was supported with his entire family making the trip over to France, right in his corner all the way to the end.
“It was nerve-wracking for us, so I’d hate to think of what it was like for him but that’s what sort of made him come out on top (so well) or get a position in the competition,” Sebastian’s father, Danny Battista said.
In November, along with the rest of the Skillaroos contingent, Battista was recognised for his outstanding accomplishments at a special celebration at Parliament House in Canberra, and was presented a certificate of achievement by Minister for Skills and Training, Andrew Giles.
The next WorldSkills International Championships will be held in Shanghai, China in 2026 and with Sebastian now finished, there is potential to see younger brother Xavier take up the mantle and represent Australia and the Battista name next time around.
