โHonestly, I wouldnโt be doing what Iโm doing without social media,โ said Johnson, referring to her bobsleigh career, which evolved from a ruinous run with injury, such as multiple foot surgeries, and an invitation from her sled partner at the Olympics, Sarah Blizzard. A fracture in her back (L4) made heptathlon unsustainable.
A former sprinter-turned-heptathlete, who was ranked first in Australia at under-18 level, Johnsonโs beginnings as a magnet on TikTok and Instagram (she has about 200,000 YouTube fans) were as a heptathlete during COVID, as she charted what she called her โjourneyโ.
โI started off doing home workouts … during lockdown and people started to catch on to it. The videos went viral and then after lockdown, I started showing everybody my journey, my injuries, me trying to get back to sprinting.โ
Her following, at first predominantly TikTok, careened into large Instagram numbers. She reached 500,000 as an athlete posting just before crossing to bobsled. Once she jumped into the sled, the numbers went Kardashian.
โAnd then when I started blogging my bobsleigh journey as well, people just went crazy.โ
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One telling measure of the social media avalanche is that, in the time between speaking to this masthead and publication, Desiโs Instagram grew by another 100,000 to 1.3 million. She had vaulted to Maximus level, as in Crowe, but this was unlikely to prove her maximum.
โI didnโt realise you can monetise off that,โ she said of her now full-time job as a social media performer. โAnd when I did, it was honestly incredible.
โI did take it on as a full-time job about two years ago. Itโs just crazy how well itโs worked out.โ
The USA and Australia provide the largest cohorts of her online fans, followed by Europe.
Johnson only relocated from athletics to bobsled โ there was a flirtation with rugby sevens in the interim โ in 2023. It took her barely three years to become an Olympian in a hitherto alien sport that she hardly knew existed beforehand.
โI honestly had no idea what the sport really was. I didnโt know what I was getting myself into at all. Iโd never touched the snow, I hadnโt been to Europe.โ
Bobsled is expensive, the monobob and pair of two-person sleds that her racing partner Blizzard bought for them cost around $60,000 each.
โWe are completely self-funded, like we fund ourselves overseas for months in Europe,โ said Johnson.
Johnson and Blizzard are almost as improbable bobsleigh Olympians as the famed Cool Runners of Jamaica. Johnson, the brakeswoman in the sled, was raised in Queensland, five hours from the Gold Coast, where the bulk of her immediate family now resides. Blizzard, the sledโs pilot, is from Ararat in Victoriaโs west and also a fugitive from athletics, having run in the Stawell Gift final four times.
Expectations for the pair in Cortina are, well, not enormous. Bobsled team races are owned by the Germans, with the Americans next in line, because they have faster sleds, the product of millions of dollars spent and F1-style technology.
Hurtling at up to 130 km/h, bobsleigh looks only marginally safer than abseiling. For Johnson, though, the sport has proven a sanctuary from the injuries that beset her in athletics.
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โIโve been feeling pretty healthy doing this sport and sort of safer,โ she said.
Wherever her sled finishes in this Olympics, Desi Johnson will be watched.
The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.
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