OLYMPIAN, JOHN FARROW
Words: Kate Monahan / Photography: Sean Hartgrove
John Farrow is an Olympic athlete whose story is no simple or ordinary one. He
didn’t get to the Olympics by pure luck or without complication. His career as an
Olympian was jeopardized in 2011 when a major sports injury while practicing
caught him off guard. His career and dreams could have ended right then and
there, but it did not. John’s story is one of triumph over tragedy, and below, is an
exclusive interview into that story.
Kate Monahan: What sport is it that you train and compete in?
John Farrow: Skeleton - a single athlete sport that takes place on the bobsled
track where we sprint at the start and lay chest down, head first to race the course
hitting max speeds of 150km/h and 6 Gs of pressure.
Kate Monahan: How long have you been training?
John Farrow: 8 years
Kate Monahan: What got you into it?
John Farrow: Summer of 2008 I was in Whistler, racing mountain bikes with my
team and I shattered a shoulder blade. With nothing to do I would walk around the
village killing time, the village was all hyped about the 2010 Vancouver Olympics
they were hosting and being summer 2008, the Beijing Summer Games were on
TV and the energy was huge, everyone had Olympic fever. I had always liked the
sport skeleton but coming from Australia, we don’t see too many winter sports.
Walking around the Whistler village with my injury, I met recruiters from Canada
looking to get people into the sports of skeleton and bobsled. I questioned them
extensively about how to get into the sport of skeleton, and with my current injury
and a few previous injuries, I decided to stop racing downhill mountain bikes and
start an Olympic dream. 3 months later, I was in Calgary at a skeleton school
surrounded by snow for the first time. I went from 6 years of endless summer into
being a winter sport athlete and here I am, 8 years later.
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