Brockhoff’s Winter Games creed: ‘Pain is temporary; Olympics are not.’ 

After a long, hot Aussie summer of recuperating from a broken wrist that was so horrendous it made a veteran surgeon wince, Belle Brockhoff will finally kickstart her buildup to the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics almost one year to the day before the cauldron in San Siro Stadium is ignited.

While ceremonies will take place around the world to mark the milestone, Brockhoff explained the reason why she refuses to get caught up in the excitement of, hopefully, again competing in one of the world’s major sporting events.

The 32-year-old, who established herself as one of Australia’s most respected Snowboard Cross athletes despite despising the cold weather, will return to training in Switzerland tomorrow. It’s Brockhoff’s first hit out on the snow since breaking her wrist last November in what she dismisses as a ‘freak accident.’

“I was on the snow, riding really well – surprisingly, better than I thought I was – and I just landed on the wrist,” she recalled, nonchalantly. “I miscalculated a feature because the speeds were hit and miss. Sometimes I was overshooting a feature, sometimes I wasn’t.

“Unfortunately, my hand got stuck underneath my hip, and glacier ice is quite ‘gripping’, so I couldn’t get it out from underneath me and it was crushed. The surgeon said it was the worst wrist break they’d ever seen. It was completely shattered, and I have a lot of nerve damage in my little pinkie.”

And while she doesn’t hide the excitement of living ‘the dream,’ Brockhoff won’t allow her mind to accommodate distracting daydreams of competing at what would be her fourth Olympics. Brockhoff explains she’s treating her return to the snow and ice – as well as the northern hemisphere’s cursed bitter cold – as a long, tough process which is designed to ensure she’s on the Milano Cortina starting line.

“It’s very exciting to think the Olympic Games is only a year away, but I won’t . . . can’t . . . allow myself to think about them too much,” said the NSW Institute of Sport (NSWIS) scholarship holder. “My focus has been on recovering from the injury, and what I can do in the present.

“So, I focussed on recovering from my injury. Now I’m focussed on each week, each day, of training and competition. I’m just focussing on the ‘now’. I’ve found if I think too far into the future I get anxiety. So, when I look at the year ahead, I tend to instead plan things out.”

Though, that’s not to suggest Brockhoff, who in 2015/16 made history by becoming the first Australian woman to win a snowboard cross world cup event, isn’t excited about the possibility of kitting up in the Australian gear and putting everything on the line at another Olympics.  Indeed, when asked what competing for her nation in that environment means to her, she summons such words as ‘honour’ and ‘pride.’

“It’s an incredible honour to be selected,” she enthused. “It’s an incredible honour to be a part of that opening ceremony behind the flag bearers, and you’re there thinking you want to give it the best you can. Plus, the Olympics are only once every four years . . .

“And Olympian is such an unreal title, it’s one only a few people will ever get. But everyone who goes to the Olympics wants more than a title. They want a medal. Everyone wants that gold medal. You’re always told to aim high but, at the Olympics, it ultimately comes down to who performs best on that day.

“It might not necessarily be the best in the world who wins, but what [the Olympic contest] does is it gives everyone the opportunity to nail it on that day. Do that and you’ll win it.”

And while the lure of competing at the Olympics can consign an athlete to unimaginable physical pain – Brockhoff competed in one Games with her knee swathed in duct tape and encased in a brace because she had an Anterior Cruciate Ligament [ACL] removed – she conceded the pressure of the Olympics can be suffocating.

“The Olympics has pressure about it because, well, it’s the Olympics!” she said. “Every four years every athlete is told: ‘This is what you’re meant to win. This is it.’ So, in a sense, there’s a preconceived pressure. It’s different to other competitions, but what I’ve realised is it’s up to the athletes to home in on that zone where they can perform.

“And the truth is I’ve struggled with it. I think the last Olympics was a very good example of that because I finished with my worse time trial. I had to fight through all of those heats with the worse start gate choice because I got last choice every single time.

“When I got to the big finals I was gassed. Burnt out. People say it was an amazing result [just to have made the finals in that situation] but I’d set myself up as best I could to get a medal. But, yeah, I was burnt out and disheartened before the race even started. I’ve changed a lot of things on top of that.”

One attitude that has changed is the value Brockhoff places on medals because the winter sports star, whose uncle Peter represented Australia in alpine skiing at the 1960 and 64 Winter Olympics, remembers a time (admittedly, it was ages ago) when winning anything but gold felt distasteful.

“When I was seven, I had a tantrum because I came second at a ski school race,” she giggled. “My dad told Peter Brockhoff I wanted to spray paint my silver medal gold!

“Peter came over and said while he didn’t have gold spray paint for me, he did have some race wax. He gave me my very first race wax, and I won the very next race. I kept that wax and still have some left over.”

While she has earned a glittering gold world championship medal and a swag of world cup medals, Brockhoff now appreciates trophies don’t necessarily define an athlete.

“Winning a medal is amazing, people want to take your photo with the gold medal,” she said. “And my dad, well, he was old school and perhaps a bit harsh, because he always said: ‘no-one remembers if you come second.’ For dad it was always about aiming really high.”

“But, at the same time, I have had some world cup victories that I’ve been disappointed with because while I didn’t ride my best, I received the gold medal. The attitude I now have is I’d rather ride my absolute best, nail every feature, ride flawlessly and come second, third or fourth than get a medal after riding like rubbish.

“I think that shows a medal doesn’t define you at all. I know that’s hard because athletes talk the talk, and then, when they don’t get the achievement, they get lost – and I’ve been guilty of that, too. But I realise it’s more important to know you’ve tried your best; you work on the things that are necessary, be realistic and honest with yourself and back yourself with everything you do.”

Brockhoff has proven throughout her career that she possesses a warrior’s resilience and toughness. Despite suffering enough injuries to fill a hospital casualty ward she refuses to allow pain to beat her. 

“Pain comes with any action sport,” she philosophised. “Car racing has big crashes, but they at least have a car between them and the brick wall. We just have our bodies, and, believe me, snow isn’t soft at that speed.

“It’s actually more like concrete. Think about water, when you dive from high up its like concrete, but it’s soft if you lower yourself in. It’s the same on the snow. We’re going 50km/h plus, though I’ve had a lot of crashes in the 80s which feels like being in a car crash.”

So, why does an intelligent, vibrant woman studying for a double university degree in law and commerce keep returning despite the likelihood of even more torture?

“I don’t know,” she said shaking her head. “I don’t want to stop. I have my frustrations with it; get really upset and cry about it.

“I have had some really tough moments, but I keep coming back because I get enjoyment from the sport, and I also have a lot of fun. When it’s good, it’s really bloody good. Before the last crash I vividly recall going down the track and I’m shouting ‘whoohoo’ with this big smile on my face. That’s the excitement I love. It’s like a really fun roller coaster ride.”

And while she finished the Beijing 2022 Games with an Olympic best fourth, Brockhoff nominated her performance at PyeongChang, 2018 as her greatest effort. She lined up after winning a race against the clock following the operation that removed an Anterior Cruciate Ligament [ACL]. Crowning Brockhoff’s achievement was she defied an unforgettable feeling of pain to finish 11^th.

“Riding without an ACL was my greatest feat as an Olympian,” she said. “We just duct taped my leg up, slapped the knee brace on, and off we went. I remember being in so much pain I tried not to cry because it would fog up my googles. That would’ve meant I would not only have been in pain, but I would have been flying blind as well!

“I guess it helps in that kind of situation that winter sport athletes are psychos. If you love something enough you just get on and do it and deal with the pain later. Pain is temporary; Olympics are not.”

Brockhoff, who is a member of NSWIS’s Athlete Advisory Group and praises the support the Institute provides its athletes, said she was blessed to have a circle of trust: people who are as staunch for her in victory as they are in defeat.

“My mother Kristine and sister Brooke have been very supportive,” she said. “My father Bruce was supportive in his own funny way as well. Dad passed away two years ago, and while he gave me the opportunity to get on the snow my mother provided me with the guidance – even though she had no idea about competitive sport.

“She’s from Malaysia and came from nothing; grew up in poverty in small fishing town called Pekan. I’ve been there. It’s a hot country but, surprisingly enough, no-one seems to know how to swim, well, at least none in that town.

“Dad came from the winter sports world, so theirs was a very different union, one of polar opposites. But the support I’ve received from both of them was as equally important, and always consistent.

“My partner Georgia, who I met just before Beijing, is amazing. Georgia is a police officer, and when I think things are tough, she really puts a lot about life into perspective. She’s doing a course in Athlete Wellbeing and is braining it. I guess she’s seen firsthand the behind-the-scenes life of an athlete.”

Added to that she singled out her Melbourne-based trainer John Povey who she describes as “nutty but great” due to his out of the box thinking, and Brockhoff calls performance psychologist Caroline Anderson, who competed in taekwondo at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games “amazing” before adding Anderson’s field is one that can “make or break” an athlete.

But if there is one thought that should drive Brockhoff as she lives in the ‘now’ during the lead to the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games, it’s her epiphany that while pain – in all of its many cruel variations – is only temporary, living the Olympic experience lasts forever.

Daniel Lane, NSWIS