With 150 days to go Kennedy-Sim has third Winter Olympics in her sights

With only 150 days to go to the 2022 Olympic Winter Games and the calendar winter officially over, Australian snow sport athletes are already preparing for the start of the Northern season, but few are looking forward to returning to World Cup racing more than two-time Winter Olympian Sami Kennedy-Sim.

The 33-year-old ski cross athlete is coming off a long recovery from an elbow injury she suffered in training last December, just days after securing her second career World Cup medal in Arosa, Switzerland. 

“It was really unexpected and it's an injury that I had never even given a thought to,” Kennedy-Sim said. “When I first understood that I had dislocated my elbow, I had it reset and I thought - what's that like, six to eight weeks?  It didn’t really sink in at that time.

“But they [the doctors] were like - this is three months! Three months and you still won't be good at three months!” 

After consulting with a sports elbow surgeon in Switzerland and getting a clearer picture of what rehabilitation would look like for her, Kennedy-Sim decided not to have surgery and immediately returned to Australia. 

“I just wanted to go home, really. I jumped on the internet and there was a flight available on Christmas Eve. I got to the airport not even knowing whether I’d get on the plane, still immobilised and dependent on other people to help me. I was in a pretty bad way, physically and mentally,” she said.

Everything happened so quickly that Kennedy-Sim wasn’t really prepared for what she would find back home, including hotel quarantine.  

“I knew it was on the cards, but in the state I was in, I thought maybe a magic fairy would see me at the other end of the flight and just take me home!”

Kennedy-Sim spent Christmas and the following two weeks in hotel quarantine, focusing on getting her elbow joint moving again before eventually returning to the gym in mid-January.  

“I’ve been in the gym pretty much the whole time after that! I am desperate to get back to something that resembles ski cross, because I could not look at another dumb bell right now,” she said. 

With such a long rehabilitation journey now behind her, Kennedy-Sim said she is very grateful for the help she received along the way, including the support of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia performance team who assisted her with the psychological, medical and strength and conditioning aspects of her recovery. 

“I am very thankful for all their support, but ultimately, apart from family and my husband, it was my own snow coach [Snow Australia Alpine Director] Shawn Fleming that was the key to a successful return.” 

The two-time Olympian is still on track to make her third Australian Olympic team and will fly to Saas Fee, Switzerland, at the end of September to resume on-snow training ahead of the World Cup opening race, scheduled two months later in the Chinese Olympic resort of Secret Garden. 

“We've been so lucky to have some skiing here this winter, at least until it was all cut short [by lockdowns], but the only way that I can do my sport is by actually racing. So I've got to get back into the swing of racing and I'm really looking forward to it,” she said. 

With only five months to go before the Winter Olympics, Kennedy-Sim continues to train in Jindabyne, where she relocated in the middle of May to take advantage of the facilities available in town and its proximity to the ski resorts. During the winter she also rediscovered ski touring as a great way to reconnect with the mountain environment. 

“I try to get out in the backcountry when I can. I'm quite new to ski touring and it’s just making me fall in love with skiing all over again. It’s really important that we encourage this within our community, especially with young athletes. Skiing is a sport for life, not just a sport for performance.” 

If backcountry skiing has given Kennedy-Sim a chance to spend time on snow, she has also been exploring other less traditional cross-training methods. Those familiar with indoor cycling might have recognised the Olympian on Zwift, a virtual platform that other snow sports athletes have also been using to train indoors. 

“I started using Zwift when we first went into lockdown last year. I like road cycling, but it was the community aspect of it that drew me into that online training space. Now it's become part of my training and I also get to satisfy my competitive edge,” she said. 

Kennedy-Sim is hopeful that the enthusiasm of the Australian fans ignited by such a successful edition of the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo will carry on and focus on the upcoming Winter Games. 

“As Australians, we love sport. Everyone has been really engaged with Tokyo and I've been emotional watching my friends and buying into the stories of all the summer Olympians and Paralympians. 

“We’re up next! We have such a great winter team. It's a small one, but a strong one, and the stories of each of the members of our Olympic and Paralympic team are really special. It’s so exciting that we’ll get to share that with our Australian community,” she said.