‘Exhausting and disheartening’: The other side of life as a Winter Olympian

Winter Olympian Nick Timmings doesn’t want any material gifts this Christmas.

Instead, he’s asking for hotel, flight and car rental vouchers. Not for an extravagant holiday – although the places he’s visited in the past month, such as Cortina, Park City and PyeongChang are beautiful – but to help pay his way towards Olympic qualification.

Nick Timmings and Michael Milton have both crowdfunded their Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games qualification programs.Credit: Matt Willis

Timmings is a skeleton athlete who represented Australia at the 2022 Games in Beijing and is vying for another Olympic bid at Milano Cortina 2026. But every time a qualifying event or training camp comes around, he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. He has to work two jobs so he can afford the travel and cost of being an athlete in a sport that exists solely in the northern hemisphere.

“Not having enough funds has dictated what races I do during my competitive season,” Timmings said.

“I have never done a full World Cup tour because of the costs. I always have to choose my races with budget in mind, [and] this has impacted my overall world ranking and performance, but I had to choose to do it that way or not do it at all.”

Nicholas Timmings slides during the men’s skeleton run at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February 2022.Credit: AP

With two months until the start of the 2026 Games, there are 56 Olympic and Paralympic athletes fundraising through the Australian Sports Foundation – a not-for-profit charity where people can make tax-deductable donations to athletes.

Although the Australian Olympic Commission and Paralympics Australia fund travel to the Games, athletes have to qualify first. Qualification competitions are based in the northern hemisphere and involve long seasons away.

The most significant avenue for funding is provided through the Australian Sports Commission, the federal government agency responsible for funding sport. However, only athletes who are nominated by their national sporting bodies as likely to win medals are eligible. These grants can reach as much as $43,000 per year.

There are other grants available through separate programs, such as the Para-Athlete Barrier Fund, which gave $4000 to six Winter Paralympians in September. Sponsorships also provide athletes with cash, but many only contribute equipment. Many athletes rely heavily on crowdfunding.

Nick Timmings training in Sydney ahead of his Olympic qualifying campaign.Credit: James Brickwood

Timmings, 34 and from Sydney, estimates he’s invested $400,000 into the sport across 14 years.

Coming into this season, he was guaranteed $1200 in crowdfunding and has been promised a further $10,000, which he says was easier to obtain after competing at the 2022 Winter Games.

“Fundraising is extremely exhausting and a lot of the time, very disheartening,” he said. “Getting told no all the time with fundraising and sponsorship definitely grinds you down.”

Timmings concedes he’s contemplated giving up his sporting dreams due to the financial demands. He’s not alone. A 2023 study from the ASF found 50 per cent of hopeful Australian representatives have considered leaving their sport.

It’s a thought that’s crossed biathlete Darcie Morton’s mind on a number of occasions.

“It’s so difficult as an Australian athlete because people just don’t know about [it],” she said. “It’s so hard to get sponsors.”

Australian biathlete Darcie Morton at the world championships in the Czech Republic last year.Credit: Getty Images

Morton, who is attempting to qualify for her first Olympics, has become adept at making a budget.

“I am saving money in every kind of aspect,” she said. “On World Cup [trips] I stay at an Airbnb and cook my own food, and not stay at a hotel. In Norway now I’m staying at a friend’s place and paying a little bit less rent, and we’re share cooking and stuff like that.”

Morton said the tax-deductable donations through the ASF had been a game-changer and had encouraged more businesses to back winter athletes.

“They [businesses] feel like they are giving back to a sport and the community,” she said.

“I got a lot of businesses together and made a fundraising campaign where I put all their logos on a jacket sponsored by XTM, and the fundraising went towards an altitude camp. I just did that in October, so I was able to train with the Finnish and the Polish national women’s team … That was at the Olympic venue, staying at altitude, so it was a really key camp.”

Those kinds of opportunities are priceless, said Morton.

“Every single national team that is on [the] World Cup [circuit] will be doing an altitude camp at one point,” she said.

“Especially because the Olympic venue is the highest altitude that we will race at, so it’s really important, it’s quite a specific venue … So it was really good to [train] on the track and especially the shooting range, to be able to shoot with different pressures and with the altitude, it was just such a crucial camp.”

Australia’s most successful skier, three-time cancer survivor and Paralympian Michael Milton, is aiming to qualify for his sixth Winter Paralympic Games.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Five-time Winter Paralympian Michael Milton – who has won the most Paralympic medals of any Australian skier – has also jumped onto the ASF platform.

A late decision to make a comeback, 20 years after his last Games, meant Milton wouldn’t have enough time to be eligible for the Sports Commission’s funding.

“I know down to the cent my budget and what I’ve got to spend on it and what I can do,” he said. “But we are talking in the areas of around $65,000 for my program.”

One expense Milton does want to budget for is flights to get his family, and in particular his children, who were too young to see him compete at his first five Games, to the Paralympics.

“My daughter is my social media manager and is putting a lot of hours into that side of it,” he said.

“My wife is obviously making sacrifices at home without me there to run my son to cricket … So this all needs some balance from my perspective to be able to thank them for the sacrifices they’re making and one of the things I can do for that is to have them come watch me at the Games.”

The Winter Olympic Games will be broadcast on the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.

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