Monday, Feb 21, 2022 • 34min
Game Changers: An impossible choice - Jess Rich
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Snowboarder and Olympian Jess Rich has had to contend with fear and push past her comfort zone throughout her career.
Jess didn’t grow up in the snow and never dreamt that she’d one day compete in the winter Olympics.
Jess made her Olympic debut in the new Olympic discipline of women's snowboard Big Air at PyeongChang 2018.
The Sydney-sider, who originally intended to compete in both slopestyle and Big Air, ruptured her ACL only one month before the Games and was forced to sit out of the snowboard slopestyle but was given medical clearance to compete in Big Air.
Jess was one place shy of qualifying for the final after placing 13th in the qualification runs at PyeongChang; however two clean runs was an impressive performance for the injury recovering Olympic debutant.
Jess placed seventh in slopestyle at her World Cup debut in 2015. In February 2016, she placed eighth in slopestyle at the Winter Olympic Test Event at Bokwang Park.
Following her top-10 performances she signed her first professional contract with the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia.
She broke into the top-10 an additional four times before she stepped up to the Olympic stage in February 2018.
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Episode five of Beyond the Ordinary : Game Changers dropping 1st March 2022
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Talking about
Speakers
(3)
Jess Rich
Marlee Silva
Rhiannan Iffland
Transcript
Verified
Jess Rich
00:06
It definitely really was a challenge, but it wasn't a challenge I was ever going to back down from.
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Marlee Silva
00:13
I'm author and presenter, Molly Silver And in this miniseries game changes will hear stories from elite Australian athletes, Women at the top of their game.
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Jess Rich
00:23
The nerves were crazy. Then it's also the Fear of what if something goes wrong,
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Marlee Silva
00:28
This is snowboarding champion, Jess Rich. She's on the slopes waiting to drop in at her first-ever event.
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Jess Rich
00:34
But then you've also got the adrenaline from the crowd boosting you up. You've got the guys on the mic getting everyone going and it's just standing there and being like I can do this, I got this.
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Marlee Silva
00:45
Jess' riding on the edge of a staircase under the lights of MT Buller in Victoria, she's a rookie and the only woman in the competition.
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Jess Rich
00:53
Fear is always present. And I'll be shocked if someone says that it isn't. But I think it's how we learn to work with our fear and understand our fear. It is a massive mental game. But you realize that it's just an emotion and if you've worked on all the steps you need you have that confidence that you know, nothing is going to go wrong.
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Marlee Silva
01:25
Jess had to contend with Fear and pushed past her comfort zone throughout her whole career. In part because just didn't grow up in the snow. She grew up on the northern beaches of
Sydney
. She never dreamed she'd one day compete as a snowboarder, at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang
South Korea.Share
Jess Rich
01:42
Being a snowboarder is the best thing in the world, you know, you get to wake up, you get to go out and you just get to go and have the most fun and I just was like "oh my God I did it after all of this hard work and all of this stuff that was thrown in front of me, I got here and I'm about to drop in at the
Olympics"
.Share
Marlee Silva
02:03
Growing up becoming a professional snowboarder wasn't exactly on the cards.
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Jess Rich
02:08
My dream growing up was to be a professional surfer, although like I wasn't very good at surfing but I didn't even really know anything about the snow until I was probably like 15 or 16.
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Marlee Silva
02:21
It's funny because I grew up in Cronulla, I still live there now and I think every kid who grew up near the beach wanted to be a surfer at some point. I was rubbish as well but I still wanted to be
Layne Beachley
so totally there.Share
Jess Rich
02:33
Blue crush was my favorite movie. I don't know if you've seen it but it was about three female surfers and I just watched it on repeat my whole childhood and that's where I kind of got the dream from just watching that movie over and over again.
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Marlee Silva
02:50
When Jess was 15, 1 of her school teachers organized an excursion to the snow and it was this trip that got Jess hooked on snowboarding.
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Jess Rich
02:58
From the second, I put a snowboard on, I loved it, I grew up doing a bit of gymnastics as well, so I had pretty good balance and then it's so similar to surfing as well, but I always struggled surfing with the whole paddling side of it, so it was kind of like surfing except the paddling and I just really fell in love with kind of the freedom and being outside and that adrenaline hit every time you got off the chairlift and also that you've got to do it with all your friends
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Marlee Silva
03:29
And getting up on the board the first time, were you naturally really good at it or did you have to work on that?
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Jess Rich
03:34
I definitely wouldn't say I was good at it, I definitely picked it up quickly in terms of being able to get on my feet and make my way down a run. But within that trip I broke my wrist so I definitely wasn't good, but I picked it up pretty quickly and I was determined to kind of master it.
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Marlee Silva
03:56
Soon an opportunity came along that not only helped Jess master her skills, but also set her on the path to become a world class athlete.
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Jess Rich
04:04
I was coming up to the end of school and it's that decision, you know, after you graduate do I go straight to uni, what do I do? People are taking gap years or going Overseas and I had to think about it and I just wasn't ready to go to uni and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and an opportunity came up to go to
Canada
and do a snowboard camp over there and instantly I was like, that's what I want to do, I want to travel and I want to snowboard, How cool is that to be able to do that at 17? And so as soon as I graduated high school, two months later I was over in Canada
.Share
Marlee Silva
04:42
It's almost a rite of passage for Aussies who love the snow to go over to
Canada
and you know, I've had that experience over there where there's a lot of similarities in the culture. I think that's why it's such a nice fit. What was the experience like for you?Share
Jess Rich
04:56
There's so many Australians now. Like thinking back, it's, it's quite funny. It was, I'd say there were probably more Australians in whistler than there were Canadians. It was, I think a really great thing for me to do just coming out of school, a great way to kind of meet new people, see the world learn new things but with people that had the same interest and the passion for snowboarding like I did, it was just so cool to be able to kind of, you'd wake up and be like, how can I have the most fun today? And that's what we'd all go and do.
Share
Marlee Silva
05:31
After
Canada
just came home as a certified snowboarding instructor and made her way to Mount Buller
in Victoria and it was there while teaching in bowler that she witnessed one of the most famous snowboarding events in the country, The Cattleman's Rail Jam.Share
Jess Rich
05:45
Any Australian snowboarder knows about this event, it's quite prestigious and it's in the village of
Mount Buller
and it's on just a stair set that everyone walks up every day to get to the chairlift. I remember my first season watching all of these guys hitting this rail in this event, it was at night, it was under lights and there was just a massive crowd of people cheering for all these people hitting this rail, and watching that made me so excited and I knew that that's what I wanted to do. Yeah, watching that, I was like, I'm going to be in this event next year and that's kind of when I got my head around kind of starting to compete.Share
Marlee Silva
06:27
So for us snowboarding nubes like myself, can you describe what is a rail jam, what does that competition actually look like?
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Jess Rich
06:35
So rail jam is on a handrail, I guess usually if it's like this one, it did have stairs underneath it, but if you are on the snow, they just kind of take the handrail and put it in the snow so you can ride it right up on top of it, you do different tricks.
Share
06:55
So this one is known for being quite an aggressive handrail at Cattleman's Rail Jam because it's just definitely quite skinny, quite steep and it's quite quick, you have to really be in control and then the landing, when you come off the rail, is always really quite firm ice so you want to be on top of your board otherwise you can get I guess injured.
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Marlee Silva
07:19
As a young gun the following you just signed up to compete and she certainly made an entrance.
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Jess Rich
07:25
I got smoked, I fell down a lot, I broke my snowboard, I rolled down the stairs, I landed like on my butt so many times, but I'm just really proud thinking back, I didn't give up because I had that one trick that I wanted to land which was called a front blunt 270 out and I just kept going, I don't know how I just kept going until I landed it and I ended up landing it and it was that feeling there of succeeding I guess doing what you set out to do that is kind of addictive. I was the only girl in it and I just went out there I guess with something to prove that I could do this, and yeah, that's I guess what kept me going
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Marlee Silva
08:11
While Jess didn't win that night, her attitude did catch the attention of a global snowboarding name.
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Jess Rich
08:17
I remember I was walking back up the stairs just so chuffed with myself that I did it and then I competed and a guy approached me and he was like how do you feel about riding for Nitro which is a snowboard brand and I couldn't believe it. I was just like no way I am going to be a sponsored snowboarder. And instantly I was like that sounds so awesome. I'm in, let's do it Wow.
Share
Marlee Silva
08:45
How did you go from being that 18-year-old Jess who's got this first taste of a sponsor and just had this first big competition to eventually ending up at the
Olympics
?Share
Jess Rich
08:57
I guess that first contest really woke me up to the contest scene from then on I kept doing maybe starting at smaller contests around
Australia
and I started doing pretty well in them and I wasn't doing it for any other reason than I just loved the feeling of being in a contest, being under pressure and having to land tricks and that's I guess that kind of became a little bit of an addiction and after a few good results I decided to enter into an event that we no longer have but it was called the Aspen
Open and that event was open to the public but it was on the X Games course. So just after the X Games they had the Aspen
open and I went into that contest just because I still was so far from being you know the women, I looked up to then like Torah Bright
, Jamie Anderson
, should perceive us all these women, they were like my idols and I was like if they can ride this very course, I want to see if I can do it.Share
Marlee Silva
10:03
Just one the
Aspen
open and began hunting down more open contests around the world. And it wasn't long before the invite started rolling in for bigger events, including the World Cup. That's where Jess found herself competing alongside the women she most looked up to including Australia's
most successful Winter Olympian Torah Bright
.Share
Jess Rich
10:21
a moment that really stands out for me was meeting
Torah
and you know, everyone knows Torah
the Olympic gold medalist, she was doing it before Most women, she's always been pushing the field and I remember idolizing her so much and then I ended up meeting her and it was so funny. I was like, she's just a human being because you just see them, they seem so big and powerful and just then you see them in person, you're like, oh my gosh, you're just a human being and so nice. And she's now a great friend of mine and along with all the other girls, I looked up to meet them in person, just so friendly, so willing to help. And then when I realized I just was competing against these women, that's when I was like, whoa, I've done it like I've made it onto this, this stage that I'm competing against my idols.Share
Marlee Silva
11:15
Yeah, That must be so surreal.
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Jess Rich
11:17
Yes, it definitely is surreal.
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Marlee Silva
11:19
So you know, you're doing all these competitions and I guess one that a lot more of the world and people who don't usually watch snowboarding do tune into is of course the
Olympics
. So you are getting ready to compete at Pyeongchang
in 2018 and two weeks out you tear your ACL which I mean what horrible, horrible luck, but how did that happen?Share
Jess Rich
11:44
Yeah, so that was absolutely devastating for me. The
Olympics
is something that it's not just, it doesn't happen in a few months, that's years and years of preparation that go into getting to the Olympics
. I think a lot of people don't realize that actually just getting to the Olympics
is huge and once you're there you're like, I can kind of take a step back and now I just focus on doing my best. But yes, so I have been working so hard for so long and I was feeling so good and I was writing a Keystone
which is in Colorado with my good friend Ross and we were just having so much fun.Share
12:25
I think it was like our fifth day in a row of riding like hours and hours every day and I was just doing a trick that I've been doing for ages and I guess I was tired and I landed on my feet and I heard a pop and I was like, oh no, I rode out to the next jump, still snowboarding didn't fall or anything and I was like, that's it and I think it's a well-known kind of thing in the snowboarding world because it happens so often is when you hear that pop, you know, it's your ACL there's kind of nothing else it can be. And so yeah, we ended up grabbing our stuff and riding down to the medical center at the bottom of
Keystone
and that's where I got kind of the confirmation that it was done and my heart just dropped and it's almost like my dreams over, but I ended up getting back to Australia
pretty quickly and just doing a really intense training regime and pushing through and ended up still being able to ride.Share
Marlee Silva
13:33
How did it end up affecting your performance at the
Olympics
.Share
Jess Rich
13:37
It definitely did affect my performance, but not as much as I thought it would. I think the most important thing with an injury like that is confidence and so a lot of it was working on my confidence with the leg knowing that I would be okay if I landed heavy, I could support myself and I had that going over. I had responses from surgeons saying that, yes, they think I can do it. And I had physios that also were telling me that, yeah, you can do this, you've got the strength and that kind of just built my own confidence because the drive was there and then the confidence was there.
Share
14:18
So going over to
Pyeongchang
I then had to do a few days on snow before the contest because I didn't know how I was going to snowboard, so I ended up going with a few of the team physios that were legends and just really supported me through there and I had so much tape on my knee that like I could barely bend my leg, but then I had a knee brace on top of that, and I remember those first few days at the Olympics
, we literally just went up and the goal was to just try and turn properly and it took me like a couple of hours just to turn properly because the whole biomechanics were out, I wasn't able to bend my leg, how I used to be able to, so I had to change the tricks that I wanted to do so that the landings weren't going to be too dependent on that leg.Share
15:10
The hardest part at the
Olympics
I think, was having to climb all the stairs from the bottom of the jump to the top of the jump that hurt my knee more than the actual snowboarding,Share
Marlee Silva
15:19
Not being able to walk up the stairs without pain, but competing in the
Olympics
anyway, that's the sort of conviction elite athletes know too well in the lead up to the Games
, Jess had been training to compete in two events, but after she did her ACL she was only given medical clearance for the Big Air event. This man, she was forced to bow out of the slopestyle, her strongest chance at a medal,Share
Jess Rich
15:41
But you know, I was like, I still am at the
Olympics
and I'm able to compete and I remember it's super corny, but I made this playlist of all these upbeat songs that were super, I don't know, motivational, and I just remember when I was just about to drop in for my first run in the Big Air and the song came on and it was called like you belong here or something, and that just played really loud in my ears and I just was like, oh my God, I did it after all of this hard work and all of this stuff that was thrown in front of me, I got here and I'm about to drop in at the Olympics
.Share
Marlee Silva
16:25
Just missed out on a medal. She came 13th, but she landed her runs and considering the circumstances, she says it's more than she ever could have hoped for, and just like the song, she says, it was the first moment she felt like she truly belonged in the sport.
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Jess Rich
16:40
I remember when I first started competing internationally, the there wasn't any Australian girls doing this like the slopestyle tour, I had only heard about all these women through I guess watching contests and social media and stuff like that, and I remember going there not knowing anyone and I was like, what am I doing here? I'm just like a girl from
Sydney
that wanted to be a surfer, like, I don't have a coach, I only learned what I know from riding around with guys in the rain in Australia
, like, so it took me a few contests and everything to kind of feel like I fit in, but the group of girls on that World Tour are so amazing and they're those friendships that I built with, those guys are like, they're gonna last forever, you know, it's really hard to find someone that understands that experience that hasn't done it.Share
17:37
And so you just have this bond with the people I guess, that you compete with, and that's something that yeah, I'm definitely gonna cherish for the rest of my life.
Share
17:47
By the time I got to the
Olympics
, I still felt that I was a bit of an imposter, but by that stage I was kind of like, God, I've done it all, I might as well like what have I got to lose.Share
Marlee Silva
18:01
Jess tearing her ACL before the
Olympics
wasn't even the most intense injury she went through over the course of her snowboarding career, Jess broke her collarbone twice her lower back, and her femur, twice. Some of the injuries meant metal rods and screws in her body and learning how to walk again.Share
Jess Rich
18:20
You get to a certain level, you know the risks and you know, with certain tricks come certain risks and certain even jumps, certain rails, you know, they are riskier than others and you just kind of have to weigh up the benefits versus what could go wrong and most of the time that works out. But every once in a while, yeah, you do get injured and it sucks. It's so common.
Share
18:47
There's always someone getting hurt and it's crazy that we get these injuries. Like I remember when I broke my femur, I didn't even cry when it actually happened, I was just like went into I guess emergency mode and I was just like, okay, something's really wrong. The first time I cried with that injury was when I realized that I was going to not be able to snowboard for up to six months or something.
Share
19:13
And I think with every injury, most of the time when you're at the level we're at, you don't think about the pain. You think about what that means for your career and how long you're going to be out of the sport, not like, oh God, this is excruciating pain, my poor body. You think about, oh no, I can't snowboard hearing you describe that.
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Marlee Silva
19:34
I think you end up sounding superhuman to the average person who doesn't do that every day. But surely there were points coming back from those injuries that you had a lot of Fear.
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Jess Rich
19:45
How present was Fear in your professional career, Fear is always present and I'll be shocked if someone says that it isn't, but I think it's how we learn to work with our Fear and understand our Fear?
Share
19:60
And it is a massive mental game, but you realize that it's just an emotion and if you've worked on all the steps, you need, you have that confidence that you know, nothing is going to go wrong, and it's the same when you're learning a trick, you don't just start out by doing that trick, you start by practicing just straight as off the jump, then you do one eighties or three sixties before going straight into, You know, like a 1080 or something like that.
Share
20:28
So there's always small steps, so that Fear isn't so big, you kind of break it down slowly and once you get to that point where you're like, okay, like I'm ready to do it, the Fear is I guess less than your desire to do it, because you know that you've done everything you can, you you know, without a doubt in your head that you can land this trick or do this jump, then you kind of just work with the Fear and it just makes you aware of what can go wrong, but that doesn't kind of dictate what you're doing.
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Marlee Silva
20:60
Do you think Fear and doubt in that sense when you are trying those tricks or out on the slopes can be dangerous when it comes to snowboarding, absolutely doubt is dangerous.
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Jess Rich
21:10
That was something always in my head because once you start doubting yourself, then your brain goes on that tangent thinking about, or no, what's the snow doing? What's the wind doing? Am I going fast enough? Can I even do this? Then you start, I guess your thoughts get so loud that you actually stop thinking about what you need to do.
Share
21:34
And that's when it gets dangerous. That's when you get injured, you get to a stage, I guess where you know the risks, you know that you can do it and then you kind of learn how to be in your body and not in your mind because you've done everything you can, your body knows what it's doing.
Share
21:51
It's your brain that's kind of freaking out and going going against everything your body is trying to do. And that's I think where I went wrong sometimes as well and why I got injured is I wasn't smart and I sometimes I guess was like, I'm scared of this, but I'm going to do it anyway. And I didn't think it through properly. I didn't do all the warm ups to get to the tricks.
Share
22:18
I didn't, I kind of just rushed it because I so badly wanted that outcome that I ignored the Fear instead of working with it. And that's I guess, yeah, where you can go wrong when you start getting too scared or Yeah, you doubt doubt and sabotage you after the Olympic Games just came home to have knee surgery while she was recovering.
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Marlee Silva
22:42
She decided that after six years of competing it was time to leave the sport?
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Jess Rich
22:46
That was kind of, my identity being on the snow, being a snowboarder? That's who I saw myself as, that's who I felt I was and having that time, I guess being in a snow town, but not being able to snowboard and after doing all of this stuff, I guess, like competing at the
Olympics
and being on tour, I guess I had the realization, I was like, This isn't gonna last forever.Share
23:12
I can't be a professional snowboarder for the rest of my life, it's just you know, I'm not going to be able to hit these 80-foot jumps forever and I'd have throughout my career, I've had a lot of injuries that I've definitely had to battle through, and I have always thought about, you know what I want after snowboarding, in terms I want to have a family, I want to be healthy, I want to be fit, and I was thinking about it during this time of doing the rehab on my knee, and I was like, if I keep doing this, what's next?
Share
23:46
Or I try and go to the 2022
Winter Olympics
again, that means I'll be, you know, over 30 I still will have been traveling the world, not settled down anywhere. And I just, I had that realization that I think I wanted to focus on more of a family life and more of a stable life, not living out of a suitcase, not being scared.Share
24:13
That what happens if I get injured again, what happens if the injuries are worse? You know, there's people every day that can get really, really hurt on the mountain and it's something that's always in the back of your head.
Share
24:25
Yeah, I came to terms and I was like, I just have to leave now and that's kind of what I did, I just kind of moved away and I moved up the coast to Lennox Head and I was just because I didn't feel like if I was in that environment that I would be able to step away from snowboarding because it was so ingrained in everything I did in my life and I wanted to see what else there was out there
Share
Marlee Silva
24:51
Incredibly during jesse's professional snowboarding career, she actually never had a coach. This meant she had to face her fears and trust her body all on her own. It may have been the more difficult road, but since leaving the sport, those lessons have come in handy.
Share
Jess Rich
25:07
The things I learned through that whole snowboarding career have come into place so many times outside of snowboarding in my, in my day to day life. And one of them definitely is working with Fear, even just I'm at uni right now and doing exams and a few of my friends get so stressed out with exams and buckle under that pressure, you know, they perform nowhere like near how well they should do in exam circumstances.
Share
25:38
Whereas I get into an exam and I'm like cool calm collected because I'm like, this isn't pressure. Like I know what pressure is pressure is thinking that you could get really, really hurt if something went wrong. You know, like that's what I see pressure as now. I'm like, there's no chance of me dying. Yeah, I'll do it for sure. That's not scary.
Share
Marlee Silva
25:59
Yeah, It's a very interesting perspective to know you're not going to break your femur in an exam. So how did that desire to settle down and potentially have children down the track influence you leaving the sport?
Share
Jess Rich
26:13
It was such a hard decision when I chose to leave the sport. And I remember like being so scared to tell anyone that I didn't want to do this anymore, that it's not even that I didn't want to do it, but I wanted other things in my life. I wanted to pursue other things. And I remember, yeah, I was like, so like I was like, people aren't gonna like me anymore. I'm not going to be this, you know, just the snowboarder, What am I if I'm not just a snowboarder and I came to the realization that it wasn't sustainable for me and if I did want to have a family and have a relationship that I could be around and you know, I was in a relationship for a really long time and I spent most of my time away because I was pursuing what I wanted and I started to feel that that was just unfair. You know that's not also sustainable. If I wanted a family you need to be there, you need to grow together.
Share
27:13
And I just, yeah even just like simple things like getting injured all the time is that lowering my chances of being able to have a kid, the stress levels, the just the financial constraints, the traveling all the time, all of that kind of just it really hit me then because I wasn't able to have the fun side of snowboarding. I was just thinking about all of that because I wasn't at that stage I was still recovering with my ACL, and I was not able to snowboard. So that was the one thing that I really really enjoyed and I wasn't able to do that and then that's when all these realizations kind of hit me pretty hard pretty quick.
Share
Marlee Silva
27:55
Do you miss snowboarding?
Share
Jess Rich
27:56
I miss it every day. Every day. And the funny thing is like I moved up here to get away from snowboarding and I got a job in a restaurant and literally, everyone in that restaurant had done seasons at Thredbo or character that's how they met, they love snowboarding. But yeah it's just that is such a big part of my life and it brings me so much joy.
Share
28:20
Like even still I went down last season I went down to the snow and I actually thought before I got there, I was like, I wonder how I'm going to feel being there. And I, as soon as I strapped in and I got on the snow, like you couldn't wipe the smile off my face and that I guess told me a lot. I was like, no, you still, you really love snowboarding. It's just like everything else about it wasn't working.
Share
28:46
You know what I mean? It's like, I don't think I'm ever not going to love it and I'm like, yeah, every day I am like, I want to go snowboarding. I look through my friends on instagram snowboarding and I'm, I'm jealous. I'm like, damn should I just like by a flight to new Zealand and go snowboarding? And so yeah, I don't think that passion is ever going to die.
Share
Marlee Silva
29:09
Am I right in saying then that the shift for you was going from Jess the snowboarder to Jess who loves snowboarding and wants to do other things and then that took the pressure off for you?
Share
Jess Rich
29:21
100%. That's exactly what it was. I couldn't identify as anything else other than just the snowboarder and I think that's on nobody else but myself. I had done it for so long. I didn't know what else I was, it was how I identified myself. It was what I did, what I loved, like every moment I was working towards something to do with snowboarding and so that's why I knew as well that I had to get out of it because I didn't know what I was without it and then leaving it and realizing I am a person that enjoys so many other things as well and has so many other interests.
Share
30:03
I've realized, yeah, I'm Jess who loves to snowboard, not just Jess the snowboarder.
Share
Marlee Silva
30:09
Looking back on your career now, what comes up for you?
Share
Jess Rich
30:12
I feel just so lucky that I got to wake up, it was 10 years of back-to-back seasons that I did and I got to wake up every day and be like how am I going to have the most fun today? And I think not many people get to say that and I was also focused on my health and focused on you know, being outside all the time. I think that is such a healthy lifestyle as well and yeah, I am just so I'm so grateful for having that in my life and still being able to go back to it.
Share
30:47
And it's really funny now like when I meet new people, I don't talk about snowboarding because it doesn't come up, we talk about, you know what's going on around here and it's really funny that it's usually a few times after meeting someone that they find out that I was a snowboarder and went to the
Olympics
and people are like, "oh my God you're an Olympian?" and it's so funny because I guess when I was a snowboarder just that was just what I was doing, it wasn't even the Olympics
wasn't that crazy because I went to the Olympics
with all of my friends, you know, so it didn't feel like it was that big of a deal because everyone else did it, everyone else I know was also an Olympian, it wasn't until I kind of moved out of that and people are like "oh my God you went to the Olympics"
, oh it is a pretty big deal isn't it? Like wow.Share
Marlee Silva
31:42
That's like the best fun fact, especially in uni classes where you have to share a fun fact if you go around the room it probably feels weird to say something like that, but you would absolutely win.
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Jess Rich
31:53
Yeah, I definitely, I wouldn't bring it up usually I get a bit nervous like telling people but I do love to uh you know if we're having a darts tournament or something at home, I always like secretly run out and put on my
Olympic
track suit and come back and then pretend I'm super competitive. So I guess like yeah that's how I kind of enjoy it.Share
Marlee Silva
32:20
So if you could sum up your experiences as a professional snowboarder, how would you?
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Jess Rich
32:26
Being a snowboarder is the best thing in the world, you know you get to wake up, you get to go out and you just get to go and have the most fun, literally, that is your goal every day is to go and do what makes you happy. And I think that having that in my life for so long, I guess that would I kind of summarize it would be like I was so happy and having so much fun and I'd like to think that people could see that in my snowboarding and thinking back at the stuff I've done, if they saw me, they'd be like, wow, she's having a good time. I think that would be like how I'd want someone to summarize my career, I guess. Yeah, I think that sport has an amazing way of bringing a lot of people together with common interests, doing something that makes you happy and I'm just so grateful that I got to spend so many years of my life doing something with so many great people that brought us all so much happiness
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Marlee Silva
33:32
These days, Jess says life is pretty Cruzi between studying a bachelor of health science with a major in Naturopathy and clinical nutrition. You can find her down at the beach surfing with her two dogs. Lennox Head is a long way from
PyeongChang
. But it's clear chatting with Jess that whatever passed she chooses in life her Olympian drive will always be there.Share
33:56
In the next episode of this mini series game changes were speaking with Rhiannan Iffland
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Rhiannan Iffland
34:02
When you hit the water everything just goes silent and then you realize I overcame that Fear and that felt amazing.
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Marlee Silva
34:08
I'm Marlee Silva, your host. And this is Beyond The Ordinary, a
Red Bull
podcast. Follow us on Spotify, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, you can discover more about game changes at Red Bull.com/gamechangers.
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🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
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Jess Rich
Marlee Silva
Rhiannan Iffland