The long way back to the Winter Olympics

2026-01-29 - 16:04

From airtime to the airwaves Anna Willcox was petrified, poised at the top of her first run at Russia’s Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. The 2014 Sochi Games marked slopestyle freeskiing’s Winter Olympic debut – a course of icy rails and towering jumps that plunged almost 150 metres – and Willcox was the first New Zealander to take it on. “I was so scared, so nervous before that first run,” she says. “You’ve got all this pressure to perform at your first Olympics, and all these people watching you, which, to be honest, I’d never had before. I was so terrified. “And these jumps were monsters. We’d never seen jumps like them. I was skiing right on my absolute fear limit.” She managed to keep down half a banana before dropping in. Now, 12 years on, Willcox is returning to the Winter Olympics – trading ski poles for a microphone – as Sky’s on-the-snow reporter. She’s one of five women in Sky Sports’ seven-strong team covering the 16 days of competition, which begins next week. She expects to feel some of those same emotions watching the New Zealand team of 17 compete in Milano-Cortina. “Especially for the younger ones,” she says. Willcox was 21 – still relatively fresh to the sport – when she competed in Sochi. She’d taken up slopestyle skiing just three years earlier. “Most Olympians had a dream to go to the Olympics since they were five, right? But I never felt like it was on the cards for me – because I was never an athlete,” The Crowd Goes Wild reporter says. “I danced when I was a kid, so I was such an unlikely Olympian in my family.” Her brother, Dan, sailed at two Olympics, in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020; their dad, Hamish, was a three-time world champion sailor who’s coached crews at nine Olympics. “But I was always around Olympians ... and I was raised to think you can achieve anything you want to achieve.” She left school in Auckland and moved straight to National Park, working at a bar and skiing. “I fell in love with the sport there, and felt like I’d found my people. I’m still on my gap year,” she laughs. “But I love sport now. It’s unique how it brings people together – something special in this overcomplicated world.” View this post on Instagram Her parents were “genuinely shocked” when she qualified. “Most people thought I was just avoiding university,” Willcox says. “The experience in Sochi was amazing. I’ll never forget walking into the opening ceremony. I’d watched every Olympic opening ceremony – and the closing ceremony because it always meant my dad was flying home the next day. But this was a pinch-myself moment that I was one of those athletes waving to the big crowd.” On the slopes of the Park and Pipe events, Willcox sat 12th after a solid first run and had a real shot at making the final 12 if she went all out on her second. “I wanted to throw a rodeo 540 in my first jump, but I didn’t land it solidly enough to even continue with the next two jumps. I didn’t make the finals.” She ended up 15th. “But it would be embarrassing comparing that to what these women are doing now.” Ruby Star Andrews, 21, and Sylvia Trotter, 18, will make their Olympic debuts for New Zealand in slopestyle skiing at these Games. “I’m so impressed by them. They have a really good shot of making finals and doing well – hopefully they don’t put too much pressure on themselves and enjoy it,” Willcox says. “Sometimes these athletes need to have that mindset to survive, because they’re putting their life on the line out there. “I remember Dad saying to me, and he’s pretty wise when it comes to the Olympics, just soak everything up, be present and don’t stress too much about the result – because next time you’re there, you’ll have way more pressure and expectation on yourself from the public.” But Willcox never got another Olympic shot. She suffered a head injury and broke vertebrae in her spine and was forced to retire before the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. There was chance to go to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, having joined The Crowd Goes Wild as a reporter in 2018, but she then fell pregnant with her first child. She now has two kids, who are four and almost two. “It’s exciting, but also nerve-wracking to leave the kids for three weeks,” she says. “But I’d be dying if I wasn’t going this time.” Her fellow presenter on the ground in Italy, Kirsty Stanaway, is in the same boat as a mum-of-two. Back in the studio in Auckland, three other mums will complement the live coverage – Laura McGoldrick, Kimberlee Ritchie and Storm Purvis (Andrew Mulligan and George Harper Jnr complete the studio team). Kiwi Katharine Eustace makes a run during the women’s skeleton heats at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Photo: Getty Images From skeleton racer to skeleton healer It’s a second time round for Katharine Eustace – Willcox’s teammate in Sochi where she raced in the individual skeleton – who’s now back in the New Zealand team as a performance physiotherapist. Eustace arrived in Switzerland this week to work with the Kiwi freeski half-pipe athletes, and she already feels different than she did 12 years ago. “I feel more nervous this time – that I get things right,” the Wānaka-based physio says. “When you’re an athlete, you’re just in it, doing it. But as support staff, it’s like you have to be even better because they’re counting on you.” A physio long before she hurled herself onto a skeleton sled in 2007, Eustace brings not only a wealth of knowledge of the human body, but the firsthand experience of competing at a Winter Olympics. It helps, she says, knowing what the athletes are trying to achieve and what it takes. “I’ve been in their shoes, and I can imagine how they’re feeling. So it’s just telling them, ‘You’ve done this before, you know what to do’. And then watching them do their stuff,” she says. In her day job, Eustace is a strength and conditioning coach with High Performance Sport NZ, embedded in Snow Sport NZ. She worked at the last two Youth Winter Olympics, in 2020 and 2024, and the athletes she took care of have progressed with her to Milano-Cortina. Katharine Eustace on physio duty at the World Cup in China last year. Photo: Supplied Born in England, she came to New Zealand for a holiday in 2002 and stayed. She was working as a physio in Wānaka when skeleton racer Louise Corcoran, who competed at the 2006 Winter Olympics, came in for treatment. She convinced Eustace, who’d been a British junior 400m runner, she’d have the sprint speed needed before jumping on to a skeleton sled. “The fact she came in for physio should have rung alarm bells that it might not be the best sport to do,” Eustace laughs. After narrowly missing a place at the 2010 Winter Olympics, she poured her focus into qualifying for Sochi – while still working part-time as a physio. At 38, she was the oldest in the field racing over two days in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains, and finished a creditable 11th. There are no Kiwis racing skeleton at these Games. Eustace says Milano-Cortina will be quite different to Sochi, with the sports spread across northern Italy, in the bid to make the Olympics more sustainable. The freestyle skiing and snowboarding events are held in Livigno, close to the border with Switzerland. Her athletes will march in the opening ceremony on February 7 (NZ time), before returning to train in Laax, Switzerland. The Sochi opening ceremony remains one of Eustace’s favourite memories. “Walking into that massive stadium was amazing – people cheering, cameras going off. I felt so famous,” she recalls. “But with the sports side of the Games, you have to think that it’s just another day. Even though I was really nervous, I had to keep calm and remember: ‘You’ve done this for the last eight years. You know what to do’.” Sky Sport will have a dedicated Winter Olympics Gold Channel during the Games, featuring Kiwi athletes and other standout moments from 9pm to midday (NZ time), as well as two to four other Games channels. Over 100 hours of live content will be broadcast free-to-air on Sky Open, including the opening and closing ceremonies, and the channel will be available of the ThreeNow app.