Anna's Brave Comeback Freestyling To Foxtrot

After a Crash Ended Her Skiing Career, She's Dancing With the Stars.

- Cloe Willetts

Olympic freestyle skier Anna Willcox is turning heads on Dancing with the Stars with her sultry dance moves and glitzy gowns, but under it all the sports journalist is a nature-loving adrenaline junkie. It’s no surprise that she’s a fierce competitor – her dad is Olympic sailing champ Hamish Willcox.

When the Weekly steps onto a boat docked at Auckland’s Westhaven Marina to chat with the retired skier and her family, Hamish is preparing to sail to Whangarei with Anna’s mum, Ulrika. They’re dropping off the boat they’ve lived on for the past three years.

Her older brother, Dan (28), is jetlagged from last night’s flight home from Italy, where he won gold in the Hempel World Cup sailing series in Genoa.

Anna’s own whirlwind sporting career once saw her chasing winters around the globe. She competed at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and was, for a time, the sixth-best female freestyle skier in the world.

“I was so in the [skiing] zone because it was everything I cared abou, and my real goal was to go to the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018,” she says.

But disaster struck. She suffered a head injury during training in 2016 and then broke two vertebrae in her back. She made the heart-wrenching decision to follow her parent’s advice and retire from skiing.

“My personality changed quite a lot after the head injury.

It was one of those moments you realise how bad it can get,” she recalls. “Quitting was the biggest decision I ever had to make.”

During a trip around Spain two years ago – to escape anything that reminded Anna (27) of her shattering retirement – her mental health quietly started to spiral. After leaving work at a sailing resort one evening, she was hit by a bike and woke in an ambulance with no memory.