CARTER, Joanne

BORN APRIL 17TH 1980 in Sydney Australia, she began skating from the age of four at Blacktown, later alternating between the Macquarie Centre and Canterbury rinks. Twice Australian Junior Ladies Champion (1993, ’94), she represented Australia at 3 Junior Worlds (1995, ’96, ’97), placing 19th twice then 16th. In the 1994–5 season, she won the first of five straight senior national titles (’94 to ’98), her brilliant Junior career culminating in selection for 2 senior worlds (96-7, 97-8).

In the lead up to the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, she posted Australia's best result in women's figure skating, finishing in 11th place at the 1997 World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her Olympic début at 17 produced a 12th place, the best result by an Australian women's figure skater in a discipline dominated by northern hemisphere competitors. Her four-minute singles program in those years included five triple jumps and a double axel. She won the Piruetten in Hamar and finished 13th at the 1998 World Championships after the Olympics, only to have her career cruelly interrupted by a major knee injury.

"I finally had an operation in April '99 and was very optimistic I'd be back in 12 months but in actual fact it took five years." She also split with her long-term coach, Andrei Pachin. "I wasn't back in training until 2001 and it was still very sore. The operation didn't fix the problem. Emotionally, as well as physically, I wasn't in good shape.” A year later her father died, and as she says: "I'd finished my degree and thought I'd get a job and call it quits… The sport had cost so much that my parents often said they were lucky they only had one child. But I knew dad would agree I had unfinished business."

She approached Pachin's wife, Galin, for coaching and returned to international competition in 2003. She won Bronze at the 2004 Karl Shafer Memorial Trophy in Vienna. Her fourth place at the 2005 Four Continents Championship in Korea, the alternative tournament to the European championships, is the best performance by an Australian in the history of the event — male or female, dance or figure, individual or pair. Her placing earned her the right to represent Australia at the 2005 World Championships in Moscow where she delivered one of the best performances of her career, placing 11th in the free program. She qualified an Australian place at Torino 2006, and went on to compete in her second Winter Olympics, finishing 25th.

This international career spanning 13 years also took her to 6 World Championships and produced gold, silver and bronze medals at highly esteemed international competitions. Turning professional, she skated as principal for six seasons with Holiday on Ice (2007 to ’12), touring both nationally and in Europe, South America and Mexico. She also performs in local productions and skated in Stars on Ice Australia. Since May 2009, she has been a professional figure skating coach to all levels of skaters at Canterbury Olympic Ice Rink in Sydney.

A registered Physiotherapist, she presented Drugs in Sport Seminars for the Australian Olympic Committee, and is presently completing degrees in medicine and surgery at Western Sydney University. A Motivational Speaker for half her life, she has been an Australia Day Ambassador since 2015. Her former Olympic coach describes her as "the Lleyton Hewitt of her sport", “endur[ing] enough heartbreak to test the most legendary grit.”

It is worth noting she consciously rejected what she called the "airy-fairy" side of her sport for most of her career, preferring to score points by power and speed. But that may have changed when she returned from injury with a new coach. "Since dad's passed, he's been with me," she said at the time. "I feel calmer, in control. I feel he's definitely watching me. I say, 'Come on dad, fly with me'."

Short Program, 1998 Nagano Olympics