Beijing Winter Olympics 2022: Tess Coady, Steven Bradbury, Scotty James, Torah Bright, Alisa Camplin

Tess Coady won Australia’s first medal at the 2022 Winter Games, nailing bronze in the women’s snowboard slopestyle final in Beijing on Sunday. For the 21-year-old Victorian athlete, the podium moment was a tough four years in the making.

She was set to compete at the 2018 Games – only 17 years old at the time – but ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee during a trial run. Her sister, Lulu, explained to Today the pain Tess has endured.

“It’s so exciting. Everyone just sees the end result, no one really gets to see the work that is put in behind the scenes,” Lulu said.

“Since her injury… it’s so exciting after what happened four years ago. It’s such a great comeback. It was such a crazy injury and everyone was so devastated.”

Coady’s mother, Kate, was rapt to see her daughter on the Olympic podium.

“It does make the victory even better,” Kate said.

“She’s made of really tough stuff. She could have gone either way four years ago, because she was so gutted by the whole experience, so devastated.

“She had a lot of work to do, first and foremost to recover from the injury, but then to catch back up because the level of women’s snowboarding is pushing ahead in leaps and bounds.

“She was injured in practice on Saturday too, so she rode yesterday with an injury that they had to work on all night on Saturday. To do what she did yesterday with that too is just incredible. We are so proud of her.”