Australia’s Winter Olympians trip waves of emotion after Games | Winter Olympics 2026

Snowboard star and three-time Olympic medallist Scotty James remains to be driving a wave of emotion. Australia’s most embellished winter athlete has been coming to phrases with narrowly lacking out on the elusive gold that might have accomplished his set of medals within the halfpipe.

“After a week of reflection, I’ve felt all of it,” he mentioned in a uncooked social media publish. “The pride. The gratitude. The disbelief. And yeah … the anger too. I’ve replayed it in my head more times than I’d like to admit. One run. A couple of small moments that separate gold from silver at the Olympic Games. It’s wild how something so big can come down to something so small.”

James won’t be alone amongst Olympic athletes in combating towards lingering remorse and the doubts that may floor from one minor mistake or miscalculation being the distinction between perceived success and failure. For all of the glory that’s bestowed upon the winners, and the combined feelings of the minor medallists, the overwhelming majority of athletes have left Milano Cortina with out stepping on to a dais.

Success is available in many varieties, and what comes subsequent will differ from athlete to athlete now that the Winter Games have completed. The vary of feelings and motivations being felt throughout Australia’s 56-strong crew will embody aid, vacancy, frustration, disappointment and despair, in addition to the pleasure, gratitude, disbelief and anger that James expressed.

Joanne Carter, a former Australian determine skater and two-time Olympian, has a newfound appreciation for a way athletes reply to their efficiency. The 45-year-old completed eleventh within the quick program and twelfth within the free skate at Nagano 1998 and, after overcoming a significant knee damage, was once more a part of the crew eight years later.

Carter returned to the Olympics at Milano Cortina for the primary time since competing, this time in a help function with the determine skating and velocity skating groups. Watching from the sidelines, Carter is way sufficient faraway from the hearth on ice to recall how she felt “100% pride” after every of her Olympic campaigns.

“The AOC [Australian Olympic Committee] say ‘once an Olympian, always an Olympian’, and that comes through very strongly when you finish,” she says. “The Australian public, the media, all the organisations, they really do make Olympians feel like they’ve achieved something special, and that the biggest part is being there competing.

“You’re left with a kind of pride that you’ve been able to put on the team kit and represent your country at a level that’s like every other competition but tenfold. The Olympics is obviously the pinnacle of every athlete’s sporting career. But it can’t be the be-all and end-all.”

The curtain coming down on the Games is way from the tip of most winter sports activities seasons. World Cup titles are nonetheless to be determined, and world championships are again on the horizon for some disciplines. The determine skating and velocity skating groups are amongst these with little time to mirror on what they achieved in Italy.

“They were back on the ice training three days after finishing their competition,” Carter says. “It just goes to show the professional level of these athletes, they really do switch straight back into season mode.

“I think a lot of the reflection will come after their season finishes. From my own experience, things hit home when you have time to sit down and really understand the gravity of what’s just happened.”

Holly Crawford loved watching the Olympics from her house in Sydney for the primary time since she appeared at 4 consecutive Winter Games from Torino 2006. The Australian snowboarder had a profitable, albeit injury-hampered profession capped by a world championship halfpipe crown in 2011, and silver on the identical stage in 2009 and 2013.

“You have highs and lows in life, obviously, but in sport, I found them to be so intensified,” Crawford says. “They’re so much higher, they’re so much lower, and they often come at you so quickly.

“To watch these athletes and see some of them absolutely elated by winning, or absolutely devastated by their performance or where they maybe didn’t achieve what they wanted to, it’s hard as a spectator even after having been there too.”

Crawford’s reminiscences of competing at 4 Olympics are tinged with frustration over what may need been. Injuries are half and parcel of sport and particularly these the place acrobatic landings and excessive velocity falls go away little margin for error. Crawford, now an envoy for Endometriosis Australia after being identified with the situation after she retired from snowboard competitors, suffered greater than her fair proportion throughout her profession.

Australia had 32 Olympic debutants in Milano Cortina, together with 5 youngsters, who now have first-hand expertise of the worldwide showpiece, and might begin plotting their return. For the veterans of the crew, ideas that this may need been their final Winter Games – or that retirement is close to – have contemporary area to work their manner in.

“I don’t think you can just count on having another Olympics,” Carter says. “It’s a long four-year cycle and you never know what will happen in that time.”

Less than every week since James’s Olympic desires had been shattered with a bet that didn’t fairly come off within the snowboard halfpipe remaining, the 31-year-old has dedicated to a different “quad” with a go to to the French Alps in 2030 in thoughts.

“To anyone who’s ever fallen just short, I see you,” he mentioned in his publish on Instagram. “It’s OK to feel the sting. It means you care. It means you dared to want something extraordinary. I’m proud. I’m hungry. I’m grateful. And … I ain’t fuckin’ leaving! See you at the next one.”