Breeana Walker
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Australian |
| Born | 28 August 1992 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Height | 1.69 m (5 ft 7 in) |
| Weight | 74 kg (163 lb) |
| Sport | |
| Country | Australia |
| Sport | Bobsleigh |
| Event(s) | Monobob, Two Woman Bobsleigh |
| Turned pro | 2017 |
Breeana "Bree" Walker (born 28 August 1992) is an Australian Bobsleigh Pilot. She started as a 400m runner/ 400m hurdler and switched to bobsleigh in 2016. In the 2018/19 season she made her debut in the Bobsleigh World Cup. Since she has gone on to win multiple Monobob World Cup medals as well as finishing fifth in the 2022 Winter Olympics in the Monobob and fourth place in the 2023 and 2024 the Monobob World Championships.
Career
Beginnings in Track and Field and switching to Bobsleigh
Walker comes from the Melbourne suburb of Mount Evelyn. She began her sporting career as a Track and Field athlete. She specialized in the running disciplines, particularly the 400-meter hurdles. After graduating high school, she trained at Doncaster Athletic Club and became Victoria's champion in the 400m hurdles in 2013. In 2013, Walker received a full Track and Field scholarship to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. After one year of training over season she did not match the times she ran in Australia as the focus in US training was on building muscle mass, and the weight gain was a detriment to her performance. Upon her return to Australia, she was coached by Peter Fortune, Cathy Freeman's longtime coach.[1][2]
In 2016, Walker decided to switch to Bobsleigh because she had set herself the goal of participating in the Olympics and had doubts about qualifying as a Track and Field athlete.[3] As role models, she named two Australian hurdlers Jana Pittman and Kim Brennan, who had also changed sports;[3][4] Pittman represented Australia as a bobsleigh pilot at the 2014 Winter Olympics, Brennan was the 2016 Olympic champion in rowing. Sliding Sports Australia (SSA) took Walker to the national team after attending a talent camp.[5] In October 2016, she completed a self-financed training course to become a bobsleigh pilot at the Whistler Sliding Center in Canada.[1]
In the 2017–18 season, Walker competed with brakewomen Mikayla Dunn and Ashleigh Werner in the 2nd division series of the North American and European Cups in order to meet the Olympic eligibility criteria, finishing five events on three different tracks. However, the team did not obtain the physical standards set by the national federation (Sliding Sports Australia) and were therefore not nominated to the Australian Olympic Committee for selection to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
World Cup success (since 2018)
In the summer of 2018, the International Olympic Committee decided to include monobob in the Olympic program from 2022 as the second discipline in women's bobsleigh.[6] Walker later described the appearance of the monobob as a "great opportunity", the use of standardized material also gave smaller nations the opportunity to compete at the front.[1] She won the first women's Monobob World Series races in Lillehammer on 4 and 5 November 2018 [7] Two months later, she scored two third-place finishes with Jamie Scroop as a two-woman bobsleigh brake in the European Cup. The duo made their World Cup debut in mid-January 2019 and finished 13th in Innsbruck-Igls. In the winter of 2019/20, Walker won three more Monobob World Series medals on the Königssee and La Plagne tracks. She also competed in other World Cup competitions with her new teammates Sarah Blizzard and Stefanie Preiksa; with Preiksa, she finished 14th two-woman event at the 2020 World Championships in Altenberg.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Australia's strict quarantine regulations, Walker made the decision to stay in Germany after the 2019/20 season to continue her training. She moved to Frankfurt with her former partner, German bobsledder Christian Hammers and trained at the Landesstützpunkt Wiesbaden, where she had worked with her former Physical/Push coach Tim Restle; whom she worked with since the summer of 2018. [1] In December 2020, she won the second race of the Monobob World Series 2020–21 in Innsbruck-Igls. The competition was the first Monobob race to take place at the same location as the World Cup event in two-woman bobsleigh,[8] in which the Walker/Blizzard duo finished eighth and thus achieving the teams first top ten result in the event. At the end of January 2021, Walker won a second Monobob race in Innsbruck-Igls; again against a full World Cup field. She finished second in the overall Monobob World Series ranking. After many top ten results with Blizzard, the team placed eighth in the overall Two Woman Bobsleigh World Cup rankings.
At the Beijing Olympic Winter Games 2022, she placed 5th in the Women's Monobob Event. She and Kiara Reddingius were placed 16th in the two-person bobsleigh.[9]
After the 2022 Winter Olympics Walker hired Canadian Olympic and World Champion Pierre Lueders as her teams head coach. She then decided to hire former Canadian Bobsledder Florian Linder as her Push Coach and Australian Strength and Conditioning trainer, Will Morgan as her Physical Coach. The decision also resulted in her moving her training base to Calgary, Canada.
In the 2022/23 season Walker went on to win her first Monobob World Cup medals; as Monobob became part of the World Cup Circuit. She also placed fourth at the 2023 Monobob World Championships in St Mortiz, Switzerland, achieving Australia's highest World Championship placing.
In the 2023/24 season Walker teamed up again with her Olympic Brakemen, Kiara Reddingius. Walker went on to achieve multiple monobob medals that season as well as multiple top 5 winning performances with Reddingius. At the 2024 World Championships in Winterberg, Germany Walker placed fourth in the Monobob event and fifth in the Two Women event with Reddingius. She rounded out the season with her first Monobob World Cup win in Lake Placid, New York USA. This also resulted in Walker finishing second in the overall Monobob World Cup Ranking and sixth in the overall Two Women Bobsleigh ranking.
Personal life
Walker studied a Bachelor of Health and Physical Education at Deakin University.[10][11]
References
- ^ a b c d Heike Gruner (18 September 2020). "Vom anderen Ende der Welt zur Eintracht". eintracht-wiesbaden.de. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020.
- ^ "Profile of Bree Walker". Little Rock Trojans. Archived from the original on 11 February 2022. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
- ^ a b Daniel Hill (6 June 2020). "Bobsleigh Bree". womensportaustralia.com.au. Archived from the original on 5 July 2020.
- ^ Jodie Symonds (20 October 2016). "One more hurdle then it's all downhill". Ranges Trader Star Mail. Archived from the original on 11 February 2022.
- ^ Laura Armitage (12 October 2016). "Breeanna Walker targets 2018 Winter Olympics with switch to bobsleigh from hurdling". Herald Sun. Archived from the original on 11 February 2022.
- ^ "Frauen-Monobob wird 2022 in Peking olympische Disziplin". ibsf.org. 18 July 2018. Archived from the original on 11 February 2022.
- ^ "Australierin Breeana Walker gewinnt erste Frauen-Monobob-Rennen". ibsf.org. 5 November 2018. Archived from the original on 11 February 2022.
- ^ "Wintersport Bob: Skepsis überwiegt bei Monobob-Premiere". auf sport.de (in German). 13 December 2020. Archived from the original on 11 February 2022.
- ^ "Poor final run ruins Aussie bobsleigh dream". wwos.nine.com.au. 19 February 2022. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
- ^ "The 2022 Olympic Winter Games have come to an end: congratulations to our Deakin elite-athlete students!". Deakin Life. Deakin University. 21 February 2022. Retrieved 29 August 2024.
- ^ "Elite Athlete Program Profiles". Deakin University. Retrieved 13 March 2022.
