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When Jessica Gallagher crossed the finish line at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, she didn’t realise she had made history.
As a newcomer to winter sport, she entered the Games with only 150 days of on-snow experience behind her, having only taken up Para-alpine skiing 14 months prior. Despite this, she became the first Australian female to win a medal at a Winter Games, taking bronze in the Para-alpine women’s slalom.
The Geelong native had been fiercely passionate about sport from a young age, with the goal of one day representing Australia in either netball or basketball.
“Growing up in a country like Australia, I was a typical sporty kid and when I was diagnosed as legally blind and could no longer play netball or basketball, I really felt this loss of identity because all I’d known since I was a little kid was loving playing sport,” Gallagher said.
At age 17 she was declared legally blind when she was diagnosed with the rare hereditary eye condition cone dystrophy. When she found out about Paralympic sport after her diagnosis, she contacted Paralympics Australia to find out what opportunities existed for people with a vision impairment.
“For me to discover that there was still the opportunity for me to live out that childhood goal of wearing that green and gold changed my life,” she said.
Through Paralympics Australia Gallagher was identified as talented in Para-athletics and selected for the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Team to compete in long jump, shot put and discus. However, just one day before the Opening Ceremony, classifiers deemed her ineligible to compete due to her right eye being 0.01 percent too sighted. She was told her eyesight would continue to deteriorate, meaning it would be another two years before she was eligible for competition.
Undeterred, Gallagher pivoted to winter sport in the hope of competing at the Vancouver 2010 Games. She had learnt to snowboard while on a working holiday in Colorado, where she found her passion for the snow. She was put in contact with the head coach of the Australian Winter Paralympic program and in 2009 began training with the alpine skiing program.
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“I’d already fallen in love with the mountains and the lifestyle of skiing – catching the chairlift and spending time in the mountains in the beautiful environment – so swapping from snowboarding to ski racing was a matter of learning. I was able to transfer my snowboard skills to skiing, and that was it, I fell in love with the sport,” she said.
“When I learnt to ski it was so close to the Vancouver Paralympics, so I wasn’t just taught to ski, I was specifically taught to ski race. It was a targeted program of ‘how do we teach her to go around these blue and red gates as fast as possible?’ Not necessarily, ‘how do we make her look pretty as a skier?’”
For the Vancouver Games, Gallagher was paired with sighted guide Eric Bickerton. Ski racers in the vision impaired category are guided down the racecourse by a sighted skier, who skis in front and communicates instructions and information about the course through a Bluetooth headset.
“The trust required between skier and guide is unlike any other,” Gallagher said. “Decisions and the communication that comes through those headsets happens within a tenth of a second. In the various sports that I’ve competed in, without a doubt ski racing is the hardest because once you add speed and fear to a pursuit, it changes the game because there are real consequences if mistakes are made.”
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Gallagher’s Paralympic career is as extensive as it is impressive – competing in three sports across four different Paralympic Games. She clinched her second Paralympic bronze medal at the Sochi 2014 Winter Games in the Giant Slalom with sighted guide Christian Geiger. She made history again at the Rio 2016 Summer Paralympics when she became the first Australian athlete to win a medal at a Summer and Winter Games with bronze in the women’s 1km time trial in Para-cycling. However, she still claims Vancouver as her career highlight, with a schedule change that meant she would be making her Paralympic debut on her 24th birthday.
“Vancouver being my first Winter Games, it really was this brand-new magical winter wonderland. I felt this really incredible energy because I knew that I was going to be making my Paralympic debut for Australia on my birthday.
“I wasn’t the most talented skier, but I had the heart and determination. To cross the finish line and have Eric, my ski guide, say we were on the podium was just a dream come true given where I had been over the previous years and how incredibly fast the process had been.
“In 1960 Daphne Hilton became our first summer Paralympic medallist and to think it took 50 years to have a female be able to achieve that at the Winter Paralympics is quite incredible. To be privileged to be that individual is just really special. It was just a very magical day.”
By: Lucy Hunt, Paralympics Australia
Posted: 3 February 2022
