A smooth slide to sports physio

The story of Jasmine Collier’s pathway to physiotherapy is a relatively common one. At high school, she was an active teenager – a keen sportswoman who figured that physio would allow her to stay involved in sport if she didn’t make it as an athlete.

Her sport of choice, however, is much less common.

Jasmine competes in the winter sliding sport of skeleton, a fearsome event that’s not for the faint-hearted. It involves hurtling headfirst down a steep and icy track on a tiny sled, reaching speeds of up to 140 kilometres per hour.

“It’s a different feeling,” quips Jasmine, whose main sports in her teens were basketball and hockey. “Obviously there’s the speed, but there’s also the fact that your face is just off the ice.”

She developed an interest in sliding sports while still at school, when she was working on a project in her physical education class.

“It was the year of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and we had to pick an event and do a report on the mechanics of it – and that’s when I discovered sliding sports,” says Jasmine, who was raised in the tropics of Far North Queensland, a long way from any snowfield.

“I thought it was pretty cool and I remember saying to my mum, ‘If I ever pick a winter sport, I think this is it’.” 

After a brief foray into luge, Jasmine took up skeleton while midway through her bachelor’s degree in physiotherapy.

She admits that at first, she was trepidatious.

“It’s a huge adrenaline rush and there are times when you think, ‘What on earth am I doing?’, but as you build up confidence, you get used it.”

Steering down the slippery course is a subtle affair, as racers guide themselves with slight movements to their head, shoulders and feet.

“You have to maintain a level of calm so you don’t freak out and cause a movement that could be detrimental,” says Jasmine, who made her international debut for Australia in 2021, training and competing in Austria and Norway.

“When you get to those high speeds, if you turn too hard, you can cause yourself to slide and either flip or hit a wall. The movements are so slight that if somebody were watching you, they wouldn’t be able to tell that you’re doing anything.”

Gaining new knowledge

Skeleton can also be brutal on the body, which is part of the reason why Jasmine chose to pursue postgraduate study in ACU’s unique double degree, the Master of Sports and Exercise Physiotherapy/Master of High Performance Sport. 

Before taking up sliding, she wasn’t much of a sprinter, preferring long-distance endurance running to explosive bursts of speed. But the sprint is crucial for the start of a skeleton run.

With their sleds down on the ice, skeleton sliders get low and blast off the block, sprinting hard for 30 or 40 metres before loading onto the sled and settling in for the slide.

“When I started to transition into the sport, I had to completely re-learn how to sprint,” says Jasmine, who completed her master’s degree in mid-2024.

“That's where the course really helped. It gave me a better understanding of human movement relating to specific sports, of biomechanics and how all the muscle groups work together, as well as some new strategies for strength and conditioning.

“All the elements of the subjects came together to help me understand what I was trying to achieve and why my coaches wanted me to do certain things.”

The course also emphasised the application of knowledge and skills in a way that treats athletes as individuals.

“Every athlete is different,” says Jasmine, “and it sounds obvious, but when you really take that into account as a practitioner in physio or high-performance sport, you’re better able to form a holistic understanding of an athlete’s specific circumstances, what their sport requires and how you can guide them to become the best athlete they can be.”

Aiming for the top

Now based in Toowoomba, Jasmine is pursuing a dual career pathway, combining sports physiotherapy with her athletic endeavours.

She says that representing Australia as a skeleton athlete internationally was “totally surreal”, a feeling she one day hopes to replicate at the Winter Olympics.

“That’s my ultimate goal,” says Jasmine, now 27, who is supported by Bobsleigh Skeleton Australia and is currently searching for a sponsor to help to fund her Olympic journey.

“I’m aiming for 2026 in Milan, but if I'm unable to reach that one, then the goal changes to 2030 in the French Alps. I just want to put in the work and do all I can to achieve my dream.” 

In the off-season, this means training hard and smart to build strength and speed – especially given that there are no purpose-built skeleton courses in the southern hemisphere.

Once the season starts, Jasmine heads north to Europe or North America, notching up as many track runs as possible, while also frequenting an “icehouse”, where sliders practice their push-starts.

“It gets to that time in the year where I just can’t wait to get back on the ice,” she says. “It’s crucial that I get the track exposure so I can develop as a skeleton athlete and reach my potential.”

 

Jasmine at the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation World Cup in Innsbruck, Austria. While sliding sports like skeleton and luge are uncommon in Australia, they are popular in many northern European countries.

 

 

 

Whether it’s skeleton or physio, Jasmine has a simple philosophy: In all areas of life, she’ll continue to stretch herself, sliding from one challenge to another.

“This world offers so many chances to learn and grow – to become a better clinician, a better practitioner, a better athlete and a better person,” she says.

“In the end, I think it’s all about seeking more knowledge and gaining more experiences so you can help people more than what you could have done previously. If you have that mindset, the opportunities are endless.”

Keen to pursue opportunities in physio and high-performance sport? Explore the options.