It was on Grondin’s recommendation that Baff see a sports psychiatrist – not because he thought there was something wrong with her, but because of how helpful it had been for him.
The pay-off has been immense. She only made a “tiny little shift” by refining her warm-up and pre-event routines into something more predictable and mechanical, but tweaks like that can turn good athletes into champions. Having crossed the line just 0.04 seconds faster than Czechia’s silver medallist Eva Adamczykova, those less-than-one percenters have added up to something huge.
“I was having a good start, bad start, good start, bad start, and I just thought that was just normal,” she said.
“And then Eliot said, ‘If you can work on your mental space and have the consistency all the time, then that’s better.’ So I guess it was kind of like connecting the inconsistency with the mental side. Honestly, sports psychology, it feels so simple when people are telling you how to embrace something, or to change something. You’re like, ‘Duh, that makes so much sense’.”
Josie Baff on the podium for Australia.Credit: Getty Images
Here’s another example, something that sounds like useless advice on face value: for the past year, Baff has been journaling every day, writing down the things she’s learned. When she looks back on them, the feeling is profound. It’s always more than she realised.
“It just helps to show that you’re moving forward every day – even though you feel like you haven’t necessarily achieved something new that day … identifying that, it builds the underlying confidence in yourself,” she said.
On Thursday, Grondin won his second consecutive silver medal for Canada in the men’s cross event. He gave Baff a few insights on the peculiarities of the track, but really, she had it covered.
Josie Baff’s partner Eliot Grondin after he won silver in the men’s event a day earlier.Credit: AP
If anything, it was the reverse: “He definitely copied one of my turns that I did in training,” she said.
An early and uncharacteristic stumble in the seeding round, leaving her ranked 17th in a field of 32, did not rattle her. Baff won her first knockout bracket, then survived a tight photo finish in the quarter-finals, a race in which she spotted an opportunity to overtake one of her rivals on a turn about a third of the way through the course, but didn’t do it, and immediately regretted it.
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“I went back up to the top and I told my coach, ‘If I’m in that situation again, I’m going,’” she said.
It came up twice. In the semi-final, Baff was third when she undercut two others to prevail and give herself a shot at a medal. In the four-woman big final,
In the final, on the same turn, she cut inside of Switzerland’s Noemie Wiedmer to snatch the lead, and rode it all the way home. Along the way, she knocked out some heavyweight names, but as she put it afterwards: “If you want to win, you have to beat everyone eventually, anyway.”
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Over the hill on the last stretch, she could hear a lot of cheering, most of it coming from the 35-strong contingent of family and friends – many of whom were wearing pink beanies, in honour of the colour of the helmet she has worn since she was a kid.
“I was hoping the cheering was because there was a little gap between me and the people behind me, but you never know,” she said. “I couldn’t see any shadows. I was like, ‘OK, I think I’m here.’”
Then came the waterworks. Baff threw her arms into the air, collapsed into the snow, and started crying – tears that she’d held back.
“Even going into the big final, I had an emotional release, and I was like, ‘wow, who was that?’ It’s not something that I normally do,” she said. “It’s all of the four years of hard work, and I guess that all kind of comes out. When it works, it feels pretty great.”
The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.
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