2022 Winter Olympic Games dream closes in for Bree Walker
Winter Olympic dream comes true for bobsleigh ace - but only after the heartache of having her summer Games dream harpooned.
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While Bree Walker once harboured ambitions to represent Australia as an Olympian, but for most of her life she never dreamt it would be as a Winter Olympian.
The daughter of North Queensland parents, Melbourne-raised Walker will make her Games debut representing Australia in bobsleigh and monobob, an event being held at the Olympics for the first time. The Games start on February 4 in China.
Walker, 29, is coming off a gold medal winning performance at a World Series event in Germany during December.
Walker was once an elite 400m runner and US College scholarship holder striving for the Olympic dream.
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“(But) I was watching the Rio Olympics (2016) and wondering how I was going to achieve my Olympic dream,’’ Walker said.
Walker asked herself some “hard questions’’ and came to the conclusion “my talents lay elsewhere’’.
Her athletics coach at the time, Peter Fortune, who mentored Cathy Freeman to the Sydney 2000 400m gold medal, agreed with her and designed a training program to help her progress toward the sport of bobsleigh.
“There was a talent ID camp (bobsleigh) and I spoke to my coach Peter Fortune and he kind of invented the idea that my talent lay elsewhere,’’ she explained.
“He switched my training around and I went to Sydney to compete in the talent ID camp and I achieved the standard.’’
She initially gathered experience in 2016 trialling the sport in Whistle and then in 2017 Walker started competing in North America and on the European Cup circuit.
Walker said coming from a “warm nation’’ like Australia, she and her teammates were initially a “bit of a novelty.’’
“But I think over the last few years our team has made our mark in the sport as a competitive team that is taken very seriously,’’ she said.
Walker spent much of last year in Germany training with the German team and rather been seen as a “novelty, I am seen as a rival and I like that.’’
All this from a young woman who was “not a snow kid’’.
Walker was an unlucky omission from the 2018 Olympics when the sport’s national governing body did not nominate them to the Australian Olympic Committee to compete at the Games.
But Walker said that disappointment only made her stronger. “Missing the 2018 Winter Games shaped me as the athlete I am today.
“Whatever obstacle you throw at me, I knew I was going to make sure I was 100 per cent for the next Olympics.’’
Originally published as 2022 Winter Olympic Games dream closes in for Bree Walker
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