when I was a young child and people
asked me what I wanted to be when I was
older I had two dreams in mind I'd
wanted to be a doctor or a chicken
catcher I'm now a professional freestyle
skier I specialize in slopestyle and in
bigger
I've even want some bling and I also
have a degree in neuroscience now for
the curious minds in here
it was my older brother Julian who
inspired me to be a chicken catcher he
told me that they made a lot of money
around Christmastime because he said
that everybody ate chicken for their
Christmas dinner
well I'm 28 years old
I have still never called a chicken in
my life and perhaps that's not so bad
especially now that I know people don't
even eat chicken at Christmas so I
discovered freestyle skiing at the age
of 20 when I was in my first year of
university winning and X Games and an
Olympic gold medal seven years after
this picture was taken is a fate I never
expected
a common trick of astera hopefully
dropping its switch you see we can
switch teleport 900 Sarah hobbling
straight out of Geneva Switzerland
together going in for the switch yeah
you don't have to clap this is a
textbook I've got much time so ever
since the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang
in 2018 I found that a lot of people
have taken a vivid interest in my
unusual journey and they've gone as far
as describing it as remarkable or
inspiring but the truth is my journey
has been an absolute roller coaster of
failures luck and successes what I
learned throughout my convoluted journey
and perhaps the reason why it's so
convoluted is that nothing ever goes to
plan whenever I set myself ambitious
goals or high expectations
I found that I would just try way too
hard and I would just end up completely
blowing it so here's one thing that I've
started doing a little bit more recently
lowering expectations
now expectations they usually set when
we're very young children by our parents
carers with teachers and they are the
ones who will teach us their values and
ideals and we get praised when we meet
those expectations and we get
reprimanded when we don't and it's not
actually until we get a little bit older
that we start having expectations of our
own the natural progression in one's
life means that eventually we start
setting goals of our own and we decide
where we want to set the bar now of
course there is a transition period in
between
a child and an adult where we sometimes
share but Morstan clash with our elders
expectations it's called being a
teenager parents in this room how many
times might you have asked your teenage
kids to tidy their bedrooms or to clean
the dishes and when you get home from
work neither of those things have been
done of course sometimes people expect a
bit more from us than what we want you
or are able to deliver but expectations
go both ways sometimes we expect too
much of ourselves and that's when the
people who care about us will try to
bring us back down to earth now I
remember when I was a kid I told my
doctor that I wanted to be a doctor
myself and this is what he said well if
you just keep working hard and get good
grades you'll see it'll just happen well
there's definitely missing a few things
but honestly this advice is has really
stuck for my entire life and what I love
about it is the simplicity of it one
thing leads to another now the
fundamental problem with it is that he
didn't account for uncontrollable
factors and so this narrative that if we
work hard at something we will achieve
what we want it's just not true I
expected a lot of myself when I was in
secondary school I spent most of my
teenage life trying to get into medical
school and it's something that I worked
really really hard for I actually ended
up in the local newspaper when I was 18
years old for having the highest grades
of my school at the time I was
volunteering in two different hospitals
on three different wards I was working
for the ambulance service and I was
attending every single conference that I
could go to on how to get into medical
school and I never got in I applied five
times over five separate years to a
total of nine different universities
across the UK and I never got accepted
now at that point I'm thinking that
maybe I should have become a chicken
catcher after all so why didn't I get
into med school you know I might have
had the best portfolio that I could have
had for myself and given my absolute
best but since there's only a limited
number of places in medical school in
the UK perhaps it just means that the
other successful applicants were better
than me maybe the person who read my
personal statement didn't really like it
and there's absolutely nothing that I
can do about this so what my doctor
should have said is if you work hard
then you will probably get good grades
and then if you do get good grades then
you'll see it might happen well in
skiing it's the same thing I can train
as hard as I want I can do my very best
performances and even get a good school
but there is absolutely nothing that I
can do about the other competitors being
better than me and so setting ourselves
expectations like I will become a doctor
or I will be the next world champion in
my sport they're just not very good
goals to set they don't really give you
any guidance on how to actually get
there a better goal in the skiing for
example might be I'm going to learn
these sets of tricks and then if I can
do them in competition then I'm probably
going to do quite well and if I don't
I'm just gonna have to keep working keep
practicing I was born and raised in
Switzerland and then I moved to the UK
when I was 12 years old and I went to
university in Cardiff and that's where I
discovered freestyle skiing I quickly
learned to do back flips on my skis on a
dry slope which I it's a carpet and I
swear it's made up of lion's claws I put
my teeth through my lower lip
this occasion I took part in all the
university competitions I won my first
pair of twin tip skis which you need for
freestyle skiing and I was hurt so when
I finished University in 2013 I decided
to pursue nutrition and I decided that I
was gonna go and do a ski season just
one here is what I told my parents one
year of fun and then I'll get a real job
well it's now nearly 2020 I'm still
doing ski seasons so this is me in
France my first season was in tinea and
it was fantastic I lived in a 13 square
metre studio I was completely broke and
in contrast to the UK the weather was
either excellent or excellent
it was either sunny or snowing and when
I finished that ski season I did
actually go back to Manchester to
England I got a real job working in an
office I was a consultant or something
like that in a pharmaceutical firm I
hated it and so I decided to go and do a
second ski season and this time I went
to Maribelle in France and that ski
season I decided to take part in my
first ever international competition and
the Swiss team was there and I could I
knew that the Swiss coach was there and
obviously I was extra nervous and I
completely crashed but he still came up
to me at the end of the competition and
he said to me in his very thick first
you have an accent hallo ich doucheface
yeah I'm Swiss do you want to ski for
Switzerland ah yeah
and so in May that year 2015 I started
training with the Swiss Ski Team and
once again I'd reset my expectations I
was going to be a professional skier nah
it did not happen that fast in November
that year I crashed doing a ski trick
that I knew very very well and I broke
my ACL in my left knee the ACL is a key
ligament and it has a very long recovery
time and it meant that I was going to
miss the entire ski season I went from
having absolutely no real-life plans to
having a calendar full of really
exciting competitions I was supposed to
travel to South Korea to compete in the
Olympic test event I was supposed to ski
in a stadium full of people in Boston
and I was supposed to travel the world
on my first ever World Cup tour as a
professional skier and just like that in
a flash of a moment I completely blew it
I was 25 years old which is considered
too old to begin a career in freestyle
skiing and I spent the next nine months
rehabbing in the gym and relearning how
to walk I'm gonna tell you something I
still don't know if I suffered more
physically or mentally so what I learnt
during my injury time is that becoming a
professional skier it's just not the
right go there is no guidance on how to
get there so when I came back in the
winter of 2017 you know I just focused
on having fun on skiing well and skiing
smart it was not about winning
competitions it wasn't about becoming a
pro skier becoming famous of any of that
skiing wealth and skiing smart and I
ended that season world number one
I qualified for the Olympics it was
super exciting but I remembered my goal
so then it's the winter of 2018 the
pressure is on everyone is talking about
the Olympics I quite often wondered what
sort of state of mind an athlete must be
in the night before their Olympic events
do they even in sleep I just picture
them lying in that bed daydreaming about
standing on the top of the podium
wrapped in their nations flag smiling to
the cameras and celebrating their
biggest win ever this is how the eve of
my Olympic event went I was crying for
an hour and a half on the phone to my
boyfriend who was back in France
everything was hurting my knee both my
heels my back and my self-esteem
we had three training days before the
Olympics and it went terribly for me I
was crashing hard I was hurting myself
and I just completely lost my
self-confidence the stress was through
the roof so it gets to like 9 8 or 9
p.m. then I before my competition and
there is one last thing that I really
need to do relax and I tried the whole
close your eyes and breathing slowly
thing and it didn't work for me so I
went to a party and had a few glasses of
wine with an Australian snowboarder
Scottie James had just won a bronze
medal in the halfpipe event and he was
celebrating in a nearby hotel now of
course I'm walking through this hotel
and who do I see on the way my coach and
he's like so where are you going
meeting a sponsor but I'm so glad that I
went to this party because when Scotty
was on stage and he was talking to the
cheering crowd I was so inspired
by his calmness and his humble demeanor
and he really reminded me of the reason
why I ski because it makes me happy
my boyfriend often tells me before I'm
stressed out before a competition he
says it's just being and you have no
idea how much weight that takes off my
shoulders
so then it's the day of the event and I
wake up with a smile on my face I'd had
a bit of an epiphany and I realized that
it no longer mattered if I came first or
last
it's just I'd reset my expectations I'd
lowered my expectations and it I was
just so happy to be there I was an
Olympian and I had absolutely no
expectations
what I wanted from this day actually was
just to show the world what freestyle
skiing was all about I wanted to show my
family and friends who were watching on
TV and who were there what we're passion
and commitment can lead you and so this
is me just before I drop just before my
very final run and this is something
that I always do so I'll fist bump my
coach and then I ski down a little bit
and I'm by myself and I always look at
the course in front of me for a couple
of seconds and I just tell myself
all right that's it have fun and this is
me having fun clearly now there is a
downside to winning big competitions
like the Olympics actually I was a
little bit worried about winning the
Olympics myself I was scared that I
would be demotivated if I did win and
actually when I was researching this TED
talk I found that a third of athletes
who are in this position who wins major
competitions don't perform as well
afterwards and if you put yourself in
their shoes
if this has been something that you've
worked for your entire life the journey
ends and there's nothing left to fight
for and also when you win that kind of
competition everyone expects so much
more of you you expect so much more of
yourself and so two years on from this
day I'm starting to understand what the
real success was for me in this story
and it's not the fact that I've got a
few extra Instagram followers for me
it's just the fact that I just didn't
lose the drive to keep skiing and to
keep progressing and that I've managed
to stay on top of my game so a lot of
people have asked me especially
journalists what do you want to do Sarah
what what are your goals now what you
expect you you've won everything but
what are your goals and also how much
longer do you intend to ski as if I
didn't know that I'm the oldest
competitor on the tour and I always say
the same thing I always ramble on about
which ski trick I'm going to learn next
because I know that's something that I
can work towards the truth is I have
absolutely no idea what I want to do in
the future and I realized that this is
something that a lot of people are
actually in this same position so this
is my advice find something that you
love work hard at it and then lower your
expectations so you can't be
disappointed and then you'll see it
might happen thank you very much
[Applause]