Growing up in Australia as an Aussie kid,
I didn't really know that the winter world existed.
Our winters are very short -
they're usually not very good in terms of snowfall.
If you'd said to me as a 15-year-old child
that I was going to become the first Australian woman
to win a winter Paralympic medal,
I would have said you were crazy.
It really is about showing that you can go out there
and you can achieve things that aren't necessarily
in the stereotypical box or that people expect you to do.
Why follow paths led by others when you can create your own?
(GAMEBREAKERS
(JESSICA GALLAGHER, BRONZE MEDAL
(PARA ALPIME SKIING, VANCOUVER 2010,
(SOCHI 2014 DOB: MARCH 14, 1986)
My name is Jessica Gallagher.
I grew up in Geelong In Victoria, Australia.
I came from a single mum, with a single income
and sport was always a big part of our lives.
I started coaching her in about Grade 4, at netball.
And she picked up very quickly.
You could tell she had a keen ability to play sport.
Skiing was certainly not a sport
that I ever knew existed growing up in Geelong.
I went to a school camp up in the snow for a couple of days
when I was in my final year of High School
but it was the most disastrous
experience because I didn't know what I was doing
and I hated it and I thought why on Earth would anyone
be involved in this winter world?
So for me it's pretty incredible to see where
my career has progressed to.
(AT AGE 17, JESSICA WAS DIAGNOSED WITH AN EYE DISEASE
(CALLED CONE DYSTROPHY. AT THE TIME, SHE WAS A GOAL SHOOOTER
(FOR THE VICTORIAN NETBALL TEAM.)
When the doctor actually said
she needed to see an eye specialist,
she was actually heading to the National Netball titles.
They won the title, come back on the Monday,
was told on the Friday she was already legally blind.
She's never ever complained.
I've never heard her, "Why me?"
I think probably my mum took the diagnosis the hardest
because it was a genetic disease.
She felt then that it was her fault,
the reason I was going to suffer.
For me it was that we can't change it, and yes, it's not
great but let's make the best of the bad situation.
I have central vision loss, so that includes things like
fine detail and colour contrast.
I am fortunate that I do have some peripheral vision,
which is why I'm able to walk around independently.
Classification for a vision-impaired athlete
is in three categories.
B3, which is my category,
is somebody with less than 10% vision.
If somebody is walking towards me, I will be able
to see an outline,
but facial expressions, what somebody is wearing,
whether they're waving or smiling,
these sorts of things are a complete blur to me.
(DURING THAT SAME TIME, AFTER SPENDING A WORK HOLIDAY
(AT A MOUNTAIN RESORT IN COLORADO, USA,
(JESSICA DEVELOPED A NEW PASSION FOR WINTER SPORTS)
I was still completely brand-new to the world
of alpine skiing and so the first process
was to figure out, all right, well, I have 15 months,
how on Earth am I going to transition from being
a beginning ski racer to hopefully
a Paralympic medallist?
That was about putting the right people in place,
finding a guide that I was going to be able to work with.
Keep Going. Yeah.
I talked to people who had been doing athletics
as a vision-impaired athlete to try to understand what
Jess would be experiencing and try to apply those type of
experiences to quite a unique and very dynamic environment.
When you do a comparison between where we are
in Australia, with mainly a summer country,
compared to people in North America or Europe
where they tend to be born on skis,
they would do 150 days on skis at a minimum per year.
We were looking at a maximum of 150 days on skis
to be prepared for the Paralympics.
It was just a matter of trusting that he would give me
that right instruction
and if I just went for it and gave it everything,
that I would be OK and, you know,
it was just such a magical time in my career
because I was still so new to everything
and I guess there wasn't a lot of expectation in me actually
being able to achieve something.
(JESS' MAIDEN PARALYMPIC RACE FELL ON HER 24TH BIRTHDAY)
I just knew this was going to be a incredible experience
because I was finally making my debut for Australia,
it was going to be my birthday and I just felt like everything
was going to work out for us.
A lot does go through your mind as to what can
physically happen, how hard do you try to ski,
because if you don't finish the first race, you don't get
to go on the second one -
you're out of the race completely.
After our first run, we were in third position
and it was just incredible to go up to top
of that second run,
push out of that start gate with Eric and cross the finish
line to hear him say that we were guaranteed a medal.
Gallagher claims Australia's first medal
at the 2010 Paralympics.
I sat in the rain and hail for about seven hours and I
didn't watch her race cos I was too scared.
She said she spent the entire time
with her hands in her head,
just petrified because she'd never seen
alpine skiing before.
I don't think she truly
understood sort of the speeds that we went at and
to be able to run across the fence and give her a big hug
and tears that were going around was
just, you know, phenomenal.
Representing Australia,
Jessica Gallagher, guide Eric Bickerton.
Being the first Aussie female Paralympian to medal with
such a short amount of training behind her.
Yeah, very proud.
You know I didn't realise at the time
how much of a milestone it was for Australia.
It had been 50 years, earlier, for a male.
To be able achieve that milestone
as well was really special.
(FOUR YEARS LATER, JESSICA WAS GOING INTO SOCHI 2014
(AS WORLD NUMBER ONE IN SLALOM.
(BUT WEEKS AWAY FROM THE GAMES,
A TEMMATE PASSED AWAY IN A SKI RACE CRASH)
It sort of gave you the understanding of, well, why am
I here? What am I doing this for?
And is this a risk that I want to take?
I was just a different person. I had no energy, no drive.
I was physically very fatigued and mentally very fatigued
and really sort of suffering that that burn-out.
You spend your whole life preparing for this one moment
in time and don't feel that love for the sport
or feel that motivation.
Gallagher of Australia and Christian Geiger, the next pair
out of the start hub.
These were really rough games.
The mountain didn't have a lot of snow and so it made it very,
very difficult to ski on.
There were lots of crashes,
lots of really serious injuries that were going on.
Oh, no! And Gallagher goes the wrong way.
Just such a massive error which showed me and I really
understood in that moment just how far off
I was from where I wanted to be.
Um, and so we went down the mountain
and, um, I think we finished in seventh at the end
but it was just so heartbreaking because we'd,
um, you know, expected to be on the top of that podium.
She crosses the line.
26 seconds off the pace. Real disappointment.
I remember speaking to our team doctor and saying, look,
I, you know, I still have the giant slalom to go,
I... what do I do?
I'm just so tired and, you know, I don't want to be here,
how do I get over this sort of traumatic experience?
So I spent the next two days in my little athletes' village
room just, you know, watching funny movies and just trying
to find the love for the sport again
and when I come out for the morning of the giant slalom
that was just my goal for the day, was just have fun.
Jessica Gallagher of Australia, the next to race.
Christian and I had fun on the mountain and you know when
you have fun, you let go and you just go fast.
So that's what I did, I went out and had fun
on the mountain and crossed that line.
It was just the most relief I think I've ever felt.
New time, 3 minutes, 2 seconds point 11.
And they know that she has herself a medal.
To know that, you know, that I've overcome all those
challenges and to be on that podium again so,
it was amazing.
Congratulations to Jess Gallagher
and Christian Geiger of Australia.
I took a few months off after the games
because I was just so burnt out as an athlete
and I just needed to rest and recoup and decide, you know,
which path I wanted to take.
And I still had in the back of my mind was always that
dream of winning a summer and winter Paralympic medal
and I truly believed that I had the capability of doing that.
I knew because she'd come from skiing that she was
a massive adrenaline junkie, she loved going fast.
And so the tandem on the velodrome could have been,
you know, a way to I suppose fill that need.
I just fell in love with the sport instantly.
I think that diving up and down the boards really felt
like I was on the mountain again.
I had that adrenaline rush,
and I had that sort of wind through the hair.
And it really gave me that same buzz that I get
when I'm flying down the mountain
and I thought yeah, this is the sport for me
and let's become a track cyclist.
(JESSICA'S BRONZE MEDAL AT THE RIO 2016
(PARALYMPIC GAMES WITH PILOT MADDIE JANSSEN MADE HER
(THE FIRST AUSTRALIAN TO MEDAL AT BOTH THE SUMMER
(AND WINTER GAMES.)
This could be a history-making ride for Jessica Gallagher,
who's been a medallist at the winter Paralympic games
and it might even be a medal now at the summer's
with a time of 1:08.171. It's a Paralympic record as well.
True athletes could probably do
half a dozen different sports.
Just because they choose to do a sport doesn't mean they
probably couldn't be really good at two or three others.
And Jess is clearly, she's an athlete,
just the way she moves and carries herself,
you can see that.
A lot of people told me that
there would be things I would never be able to do.
And for me I chose to ignore that and just go out there
and do things that I always wanted to.
Being a vision-impaired athlete provides so much complexity.
The unique variability of needing a guide
and relying on a guide.
You know, it's not just about me on that mountain.
Certainly by saying yes to opportunities and being open
to change and to trying new experiences, even if they scare
the hell out of me, it's led me down pathways
that I didn't even know existed.
If someone says they don't think I can do
something, it's usuaully just
"well, sit back and watch me do it."
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