An evacuation on a private plane, bedridden on her back for a week, robotics surgery and adult diapers.

Luckless Australian snowboarder Belle Brockhoff already has some impressive injury tales from her career on the slopes, but even she admits she has got some doozies to tell from her latest scary setback on the snow.

The three-time Winter Olympian has opened up on the horror crash in eastern Europe last month which left her with a broken back and has put her hopes of competing at a fourth Games in Milano Cortina next February under a cloud.

Now recovering at home in Melbourne, Brockhoff was airlifted to hospital after she crashed at high-speed while competing in a snowboard cross World Cup race in Georgia.

The 32-year-old fractured her L1 vertebrae as she landed heavily on her coccyx.

She was flown by helicopter from the course to hospital in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi where she was assessed for damage to her spinal column before being transported by private plane to Greece for intricate surgery on her fractured back.

The crash came just months after Brockhoff “obliterated” her wrist at a pre-season training camp in November when her hand got caught underneath her in another freak accident.

Seven years ago, Brockhoff came back from two ACL injuries to the same knee to compete at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games without an anterior cruciate ligament when she had to “just duct tape the thing up”.

This time, Brockhoff came precariously close to doing not only career-threatening damage, but what could have been life-changing as well.

“I didn’t realise the severity of it,” Brockhoff said as she recovered at home.

“I have had so many people, including specialists, saying, ‘You’re so lucky. It could have been a lot worse, it could have hit your spinal cord and that would have been the end of your career, including walking’.

“A few people have said that over the last three weeks since my surgery and I’m like, ‘Oh, f***, should I be more concerned?’

“If I nicked the spinal cord, even just a fragment of bone just touched it a little bit, I could have had nerve damage and all kinds of issues, maybe not had the use of your leg, or both legs.

“I’d had the best preparation I could hope for running into the season, I felt strong, I felt athletic, I felt so excited and then it just went from such a high, to such a s*** one.”

THE CRASH

Working her way back into competition after recovering from her broken wrist, Brockhoff chose the Georgia event because it was felt the course was an “easy, simple track”.

In her last race of the day, Brockhoff found trouble when she overshot one of a trio of jumps and landed in a “really funky position”.

“I overshot the jump and landed in the takeoff of the next jump and basically freaked out and sat down and then slid off the jump and landed on my a***,” Brockhoff said.

“It all happened very quickly. I could have tried to stick it out, the landing, but I wouldn’t have known what would have happened in the next jump.

“It was like a compounding effect … unfortunately I just landed in a really funky position.

“I have crashed like this so many times before, but it was just the right angle, the right force, the right everything that just cracked my L1 in half.

“I didn’t hear it crack, but I felt it crack.”

Brockhoff knew immediately there was serious damage.

“One of my coaches came down and I said, ‘Hey, I have broken my back’. So I just stayed in a very still position because you don’t know,” Brockhoff said.

“He knew a little bit about spine stuff, just common sense stuff and felt my hamstring, my quad, my glutes, my calves just to see if I had any feeling.

“I was crying. I was in a little bit of pain, but I wasn’t crying because of the pain, I was crying because I had just come back (from injury). Just from this high to the low really got me.”

Brockhoff then faced an anxious wait to get carted off the course and into an ambulance to meet the helicopter which would take her to hospital.

If the crash wasn’t bad enough, Brockhoff felt her extraction from the mountain wasn’t as smooth as it could have been.

“They were very rough with getting me off the hill. I wasn’t strapped down properly, it was just a single strap around my hip and my limbs were moving around and I had to stabilise myself by just hanging on,” Brockhoff said.

“If anything, I would have had a spinal cord injury with the cart!

“It’s a bit more rough there compared to here in Australia. Here, they would have had seven to 10 straps, strapped down on the bed, completely immobilised, maybe like a back splint to hold things in place, maybe a support around your neck.

“But none of that. They’re like, ‘Just hop on the f***ing cart and we’ll drag you off’.”

THE SURGERY

After undergoing scans in Georgia, the call was made to fly Brockhoff to Greece, accompanied by a member of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia medical team, for the delicate surgery on her back.

But she was not allowed to move and had to lay on her back for almost a week before she went under the knife.

“I got to ride in a private plane for the first time, which was fun but not for the right reasons,” Brockhoff said.

“It was a four-hour plane ride from Georgia to Greece where they had robotics. It was very intricate surgery.

“They called a few different hospitals in different countries just to make sure that I had the best care – the most medically advanced option because it’s your spinal cord, it’s not like a broken finger or whatever.

“It was sh***y, but with the extraction and all the planning and stuff I had to lay on my back and was not allowed to move for six days straight.

“So I had to have people bring me food and water and help me with different things.

“I have way more appreciation for being able to walk and move and everything now.”

Brockhoff now had an impressive collection of hardware in her back, fixing her vertebrae.

“They put six pins in and then two rods on each side, so the two vertebrae above the L1 vertebrae they fixed and then the bottom single vertebrae underneath the broken one, they also fixed as well,” Brockhoff said.

“So that was to basically stabilise the broken vertebrae so it could heal without collapsing on itself.

“The surgeon said the spine had compressed a bit, so there was a bit of pressure on my spinal cord. With the robotics, the incisions are very minimal compared to what I expected – I thought they were going to rip me right open and I’d have these crazy scars.

“But he said he had to put a balloon-like contraption to create space in my spine so that he could put the fixtures in and so he could hold it open.

“Until about six weeks – when the bone fully heals – leading up to that point I still have a risk of it collapsing on itself. So I have to be quite careful with what I do, I can’t put weight on my spine that creates pressure.”

Brockhoff clocked up another first while recovering in hospital in Athens.

“I’ve got some great stories from it, including having to wear an adult diaper for a few days,” Brockhoff said.

“That was post-surgery when I was just laying there because your bowels don’t really do anything when you’re laying there and you’re not eating much either, so that was an interesting experience.

“I got nappy rash as well, so that was great experiencing that as a 32-year-old.

“There are some funny things to laugh at. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right? You may as well make some jokes about it.”

THE COMEBACK

Brockhoff was targeting a place at her fourth Winter Olympics in Italy next February, but she has just 11 months to mount a comeback.

But she is not ruling herself out just yet.

Brockhoff will know more about what her recovery path looks like when she has scans to see how the bone is healing six weeks after post-surgery.

“Anything is possible. That’s completely my intention to come back,” Brockhoff said.

“I think it is important for me to do this rehab and get my body back to what it was as much as I can right up to the Olympics.

“I am wholeheartedly committed to getting there, but at the same time I have to consider all the risks and make sure that I do this as safely as possible because it is an action sport and no one goes through the season without having crashes.

“It could have been worse, I could have done this crash right before the Games as well. I still have a chance which is positive.”

The complicating factor is the collection of metal now in her back.

Will she have time to have it taken out and recover from another surgery late in the year before the Games? Or does she leave it in, which presents serious risks if she crashes.

“Do I get the plate out before the Games or do I just have to manage it throughout the Games? There are all sorts of things to consider,” Brockhoff said.

“I don’t have to (have it taken out), but it’s more the risks around if I crash with the plates in.

“Because I have got four vertebrates that are technically fixed what that would mean if I crashed? You can’t control your crashes, sometimes you just have to take one.

“But even the simplest of crashes, like what I had with my back can be the worst ones. I just have to gain as much information as I can.

“The earliest I would be able to get the plate off, just based on paper, would be in December.”

Brockhoff is now able to walk for 30 minutes to an hour each day and can drive, but can’t sit or stand in the one position for more than an hour.

But she won’t be able to slowly integrate load-bearing exercises until at least six weeks after her surgery when the “bone typically heals”.

A FOURTH GAMES?

Brockhoff just missed out on an individual medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing when she finished fourth in snowboard cross.

Aside from the lure of becoming a four-time Olympian, Brockhoff is eager to add an Olympic medal to her snowboarding resume.

“That would be nice. I came close last Olympics and I have made a lot of changes since then … I never want to be in a position where I am thinking about the what ifs,” Brockhoff said.

“A medal is always the aim regardless of what I am in … whether it’s winning a Monopoly board game or winning a World Cup, I am very competitive.

“(A fourth Games) would mean the world to me, but at the same time, sport is not everything. I have a lot of things to look forward to after sport as well – whether it’s me retiring after the Games, or me retiring after a fifth Olympics I don’t know.

“I’m very lucky and grateful to possibly be able to get to four Olympics, which I know a lot of people don’t get to do in their lifetime.“