BY LIZ LAWSON AND EMILY GUY

It’s après-ski time for Gabi Ash.

After competing all over the world and in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Ash has earned a well-deserved rest under sunnier skies.

The retired high-flying aerial skier represented Australia in her final Olympic jump and is now enjoying a change of pace.

“I felt like it was time to try something new,” recalled Ash after coming home from the 2022 Olympics.

Ash finished 14^th in the Beijing Olympics, an excellent result for a rookie Olympian.

“I did like the training but in the last year or so (of competing), I just was having a bit of a hard time.”

With an itinerary bursting with travel, including winters in Europe, Asia and the United States, Ash reflected on the “awesome lifestyle” of an elite freestyle skier.

However, with a full year of training planned and commitments all over the world, Ash described the lifestyle as "all consuming” and a reason to walk away from the sport.

“It depends - some athletes were at home for longer so they could have more of a work-life balance,” Ash said.

“We’d cycle through coaches a bit, and I’d find one coach … they have training and now you have free time and now you need to get a hobby or study. And then another coach was very much like (you need to practise) aerials all day.”
 

It is common for high-level aerial skiers to stay in the sport for a long time, in some cases for up to 10 years such as Flying Kangaroos Danielle Scott and Laura Peel.

Casting her mind back to her peers who also left the sport, Ash found that “with aerials it seems that people just stop because they don’t like the lifestyle, (they are) just not able to commit in that sense”.

“With winter sport, it did really seem like you had to commit to it, because a lot of winter athletes have to be away for so long,” Ash said.

“We’re not really able to work, (some) people do study, but it’s - I guess - one subject a semester.”

Ash, who studied a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University while competing, found a release through study as she faced the challenges of training.

“It definitely (did) help having something else to do - because you get really in your head,” Ash said.

“If you’re just skiing all day every day, it’s pretty all-consuming - like if my training session was bad then my day was bad.”

Ash said she felt siloed by the all-consuming winter sport.

“It was very much like, this is your schedule for the year, you need to be here at this time and do this at this time,” she said.

“If you have something on, change it (and) don’t think about working.”

Ash, like her fellow aerial skiing teammates, was clearly passionate about this exciting Olympic sport.

Like most aerial skiers, Ash’s first sports were away from the snowfields.

Ash started her athletic career as a diver.

After winning a scholarship in the VIS aerial skiing program, Ash’s aerial background allowed her to transfer her talents seamlessly onto the slopes.

“I stopped the skiing before I was diving, and then I quit that when I was 18,” Ash said.

“And I was kind of like, ‘what else can I do and I kind of missed the skiing’.

“Luckily for me, I knew how to ski, but a lot of them don't, a lot of previous gymnasts don't know how to ski.

“The program teaches you how to ski but you bring about that like an acrobatic background so you just put the two together.”

A few years later, Ash was jumping on the international stage at the 2022 Winter Olympics in China.

This was taking place as the world recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

It caused more anxiety among the athletes.

“It was like – ‘don't do anything that's going to jeopardise you or the whole Australian team’ pretty much,” Ash said.

“There was a Ukrainian jumper, she tested positive while she was in the village and she wasn’t allowed to compete.”

As daunting as the 2022 Winter Olympics was for the then 22-year-old Flying Kangaroo, Ash wasn’t alone.

Ash and her older sister, Sophie, became the first sisters to be selected for the Australian Winter Olympic team.

“It was awesome to compete with (my sister), it was funny though because obviously COVID was really going around during the Olympics,” Ash said.

“Sophie wasn’t the main motivating factor, but like obviously knowing that she had the chance to go and I had the chance to go, it was really cool.”

Growing up in Melbourne, Ash recalls how winters for the sisters were spent on mountains. They were encouraged, or gently pushed, into snow sports by their parents.

“They pushed us into that kind of stuff,” Ash said.

“We were skiing from a young age and then I think, just the fact that they would take us up every weekend got us to that level.”

 

After her magnificent effort through the COVID-ridden Olympics, Ash felt she was finished after a strenuous career – and always on the hop.

“After the games, I took time off and then I went to that winter and then just skied,” she said.

“I didn't jump and I was kind of okay. I think I was ready to be done.”

Swapping snow-capped mountains and full-on winters abroad for a quieter life in rainy Melbourne, the adjustment to regular life was “weird”, Ash said.

“The first year was weird. I'd say it’s pretty normal now, but it's just the adjustment to, I guess, life here,” she said.

“Also, just integrating back into life here (in Melbourne) because I would be away for so long and you’re in that training mindset … coming back here, it's like … now what?”