It is simple for Jackie Narracott, an Australian born and bred on Brisbane’s sunny Gold Coast: if she can win an Olympic silver medal in skeleton, then anything is possible.

“It is one thing to achieve your dreams, but this is the next stage, inspiring the next generation to not necessarily repeat what I have done, but to do better than I have done,” Jackie said, who has gone to Gangwon to be an Athlete Role Model (ARM) at the Gangwon 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games.

“Also, for them to recognise it is possible. That OK, it might be hard, but there are ways and if one way doesn’t work, you can find different ones.

“I want them to know their dreams aren’t silly and there is definitely a path.”

Jackie, who is on a season-long sabbatical from skeleton, is well-suited to being an ARM. The sports-mad youngster’s Olympic flame was lit by the Sydney 2000 Games.

“Being able to watch all these amazing athletes do their thing on the world stage night after night after night just instilled in me, and a lot of others of my generation, this instinct of, this is what we are going to do,” she said.

The fact her uncle Paul Narracott was the first Australian to compete at the summer and winter Olympic Games, in athletics at Los Angeles 1984 and bobsleigh in Albertville eight years later, gave weight to this belief.

But even her nearest and dearest were shocked when Jackie gave up on her own promising track and field career to pursue sliding.

“They thought I was nuts then, they still think I am nuts now,” Narracott said with a smile, before conceding that for a while she thought they might be right.

“My first seasons on the World Cup sucked. They were so hard. No coaching, no financial support,” Jackie said, who made her World Cup debut in 2014.

“I was travelling the world competing with girls who had 10 years of experience compared to my three. There were many times when I looked at it and thought, am I ever going to get good at this? Tears constantly. I was getting my backside kicked.”

But, as she will be sharing with any YOG athlete who cares to listen, she stuck at it.

“For me, the only way I was going to get better was to watch the girls I wanted to beat and learn from them,” she said. “I watched sled, after sled, after sled to try and learn. And I sat watching in the training room, thinking, OK, how are these girls doing things? How are the guys doing things?

“It helped being from a small nation too because people are more likely to help. Also, when you are not a threat and you are running round like a headless chuck, people are more likely to help.”

Slowly the tide turned. Jackie's first World Cup top-10 came in 2016. Another two followed across the next three seasons and then, in January 2022 she finally beat them all. In St Moritz, Switzerland, the sport’s spiritual home, the then 31-year-old broke the track record and became the first Australian to win a skeleton World Cup title.

It got even better at the Beijing 2022 Games, where she became the first Australian to win a sliding sport Olympic medal. The best news, as far as Jackie is concerned, is that the impact from that silver has already rippled far and wide.

“We have a couple of new skeleton girls out of it, which is amazing,” she said. “If we can get a push track (in Australia), that’s the next big thing for us.”

This artificial track, on which newcomers can get a feel for the sport and elite athletes can train, would transform the outlook for Australian bobsledders and sliders. For one thing, Jackie used to leave Australia in October and return in March each year.

Despite the challenges of travel and funding, she was never the only slider from tropical climes. While she regularly competed against athletes from Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands, she is also now seeing youngsters from African countries and from Asian nations, including Vietnam and Thailand, appearing on the international scene.

A combination of social media exposure, International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation development funding, and events like Gangwon 2024 are making all the difference. All that and people like Jackie.

“I want to use the experience I have gained to try to find and help nurture this next generation,” she said. “I don’t want to be the last one.”

Olympic Information Service