Greta Small

Greta Small
Alpine Skier
The end of 2016 was my comeback season from an ACL [injury] I had done in 2015.

I'd trained for 12 months and come back training really well: won the Australia New Zealand Cup Series for the sixth time in my career; on the YongPyong slopes in Korea for the Olympic test event, I did well in the slalom the first day.

And then the second day of the test events unfortunately I had another crash. That week I was in surgery getting my second ACL in two years.

When I got on the plane leaving Korea back to Australia. I was like in '12 months I'm going to be on this plane back to Korea'.
So I'm basically here at the AIS. I'm training and in rehab, and with the team around me. I know that I have the support and the willpower to to make that happen.

I've been on the ARC team the athlete rehabilitation center and the main support team around me has definitely been with the physio.

Paula's done two knees of mine now, so she's really great, and she knows exactly exactly what the process was.
And then Michael at the S&C; definitely to get your strength back and and put you through your paces in the in the gym.

Paula Chalrton
AIS Physiotherapist
When she arrived she was barely weight-bearing so it was a couple of weeks before we could even get her walking comfortably, and a couple more weeks after that until she was she was walking without the brace and walking without the crutches.

So we were doing very basic things initially we're getting the swelling down, pain management, getting range of motion as much as we could and getting her walking.

Recently we've just been keeping an eye on her her rehab doing some testing and prescribing some additional rehab exercises.
It's more being strength and exercise-based.

Michael Speranza
AIS Trainer
When Greta came back from surgery we needed to work on things like cross training or working parts of body when affected by the surgery so upper body. And then as she gets function back we're able to move more towards lower limb training.

So some key focuses were symmetry; so making sure that her left and right were of similar strength.

With Greta, she had a quad graph, so we really had to work on getting her leg extension a lot better.

Greta is one of the best trainers in the gym that I probably worked with. he doesn't need any motivation she brings it herself. If anything you need to hold her back.

Renee Appaneal
AIS Psychologist
With Greta - and with a lot of athletes who were who, you know, have months out before returning to sport - one of the first things we'll do is capture what their current strengths and skills are. So with with Greta part of her repertoire, so to speak, was imagery, focus attention, really well-developed mental skills you know that we might consider. It's just the traditional sport psychic skills. So for us it was really about you know how can we use those with with rehab now?

Greta, like a lot of elite athletes are really great at being fully absorbed in the task at hand when they're competing or they're training, and out there racing so it was about how can she practice and refine that back here in rehab?

I think what what she left here with was feeling really confident that she took opportunities to develop skills that were going to further strengthen her ability to do well

Greta Small
The goal I set for myself when when I had surgery in January was that at six months, I wanted to be on the snow.

We finally went up there and I was on week 25 post-surgery, and I was like 'we're back we're back in the mountains. It's happening'.
I think an injury either changes you or you stay the same. If it can change you in a positive light and and you can learn and grow as a person as well as an athlete, I think that's the best outcome.

You know you've had the injury now. You can't control that but you can control how you're going to come out of the injury better stronger faster.

I'm excited to ski fast next year.