4 hours ago
5
As part of Zoe Atkin’s degree at Stanford University she is learning how the brain conquers fear. The Team GB freestyle skier is about to put theory into practice in one of the most dangerous – and dazzling – sports at the Winter Olympics. “What we do is pretty risky,” she says. “When a regular person watches, they’re like, ‘Oh my god, these guys are crazy. What are they doing?’”
No wonder, given her sport involves skiing down a 22-foot wall of ice before twisting and spinning her body high into the sky and landing back on the wall. Then repeating the daredevilry five more times in quick succession.
Crashing and injuries are inevitable. Especially as Atkin can fly higher and spin faster than most of her rivals. But the 23-year-old isn’t crazy. The 23-year-old just wants to take us all inside the world of freeski halfpipe and how she is pushing the boundaries of her sport in an attempt to win Olympic gold.
Does she feel fear? “Of course,” she says. “It’s a 22-foot wall of ice and we’re doing manoeuvres over it. There are some adrenaline junkies out there, but I’ve definitely always felt fear very acutely. That was something I struggled with a lot in the past. But now I am going 15-feet out of the half pipe so you have to be like, ‘OK, I’m going to go higher and it’s going to be more dangerous’.
“But it is also something I work with my sports psych on. What I tell myself is, this is just a feeling, you don’t have to buy into it. You’re going to be scared. You should be scared. This is a scary thing. It’s a risky thing. But I train for this and I’m ready.”
At Stanford, Atkin has been studying symbolic systems, a course that blends psychology and probability, mathematics and how people think. “Being able to learn about fear as a biological process has really helped me,” she says. “I know my heart racing like this is just a feeling and I can be bigger than this.
“We all have these instinctual, biological-like fear responses. But if you want to grow as a person, you have to confront those uncomfortable feelings, be in those uncomfortable situations and push through.”
Last year, Atkin did exactly that to become world champion. Her success was down to her signature trick, an alley-oop flat 540 mute, which not only required the athleticism to fly 15 feet in the air, spin 540 degrees and grab one of her skis before landing, but the guts to spend weeks crashing before getting it right. “I learned the trick a few years ago – first on an airbag, which is basically like a huge bouncy castle, and then on snow,” she says. “But then I had a couple [of] falls and it became a pretty big mental block for me.”
How did she overcome the block after two years of trying? By spending a fortnight failing and hurting until she succeeded. “I’m very calculated and meticulous when I push the progression of what I’m doing,” she says. “We’re not just throwing ourselves out of the half pipe for no reason. It’s like, ‘today we’re going to go one foot higher. Then tomorrow I’m going to go two feet higher.’
“But I would just fall on that trick over again and land on my hip. Until I finally landed it and built up the confidence to do it at the world championships.”
Even then it did not go perfectly, at least not initially. “I fell in my first run on the trick,” she says. “But I was like, ‘No, I got this, I’m going to land it.’ And I was able to put it in my second and last run to win the world championships. It was just such a good full circle, to overcome this hurdle I’ve been thinking about for years.”
Studying at Stanford has helped in other ways. Four years ago, she came ninth in Beijing. It was a hard Games, she says, with daily Covid tests and having to eat meals with plastic sheets either side of her in the athletes’ village. Finishing outside the medals also stung hard.
“The loss, with something I perceived to be not my best performance, was absolutely devastating to me,” she says. “Cultivating that identity outside sport has really helped my performance.”
Last month, Atkin further reinforced her status as one of the favourites for ski halfpipe gold along with China’s Eileen Gu by winning the X-Games. She says she is primed and ready for Milano Cortina. “It’s tough going up against such an amazing competitor, but the girls I’m competing against force me to be better. I’m definitely excited and feeling pretty good.”
If Atkin were to make the podium, she would emulate her elder sister, Izzy, who won Britain’s first Winter Olympics skiing medal in Pyeongchang when she took bronze in the women’s slopestyle ski eight years ago. “She’s always been a very big role model for me. I got into skiing because of her.
“She’s four years older than me, so she’s always been a little bit bossy and the leader of the two of us. But seeing her win an Olympic medal opened my eyes as to what was possible for me.”
