Built to bounce back: a Para snowboarder’s playbook for perseverance

A shocking accident in 2018 changed Ollie Hill’s life forever. We spoke with the GB Para snowboarder about how to seize the unexpected opportunities that can emerge from even the darkest times.

Ollie Hill - snowboarding with visible lens

GB Para snowboarder Ollie Hill

What does ‘resilience’ mean to you?

For me, it’s about how to deal with the bad times and make sure that you’ve got yourself in a good frame of mind to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and move forward. Sometimes things don’t go the way you planned and sometimes things come up that are completely unexpected. You have to understand that the world is going to keep turning – so try to have a glass-half-full attitude.

How do you turn challenges or hardships into opportunities?

I came from bike racing, but I ended up losing my leg in an accident completely outside of the sport. Then I came across the GB Snowsport Para snowboarding team and I could see an opportunity. You could argue that the accident is the worst thing to happen in my life, but it’s also the best, because of everything that has come from it. Most opportunity usually comes out of something negative.

How has resilience led to tangible success for you?

I won bronze in the last Paralympic Games, which was the first medal for Great Britain in Paralympic snowboarding. But for me, my biggest success was winning my very first World Cup race, which I did the season after the Games. It was the first race of the season. I was really fired up and went there to win, not to come second, third, or fourth. And in the same year I won the overall title in banked slalom, which was no small feat.

How do you stay adaptable when plans need to change quickly?

Having been through the accident and a lot of pain, rehab and recovery (and all the million things in between), gives me some perspective when things don’t go right. It’s important to have the humility to understand when things aren’t going your way. You need to look at them without emotion and evaluate what you need to do to change them – that’s something I think I learned from running businesses before my accident.

How do you stay motivated when progress feels slow or obstacles insurmountable?

There are periods when I have great success in a very short space of time. Then I have periods when I feel as though I’m not moving forward and everyone else is gaining around me. I had two major surgeries over the past two summers, and that was starting to get me down, because I’ve missed two complete summers of training. In the end, I just had to have a look in the mirror and remember why I started doing this and what I’ve already achieved. If you can find a way to keep the determination you had when you started, then everything else comes around on its own.

What practical strategies do you use to manage stress and pressure?

Try to understand why you’re feeling stressed and figure out what you need to do to attack the problem. Sometimes I just go for a walk away from the noise and reflect on it. Sometimes I go and talk to the coaches and say, “What’s going on, what did I do wrong?” I think it’s a combination of understanding the type of problem you have and how it normally gets solved, or talking to a group to find a collective answer.

How important is having a good team of people around you to maintaining resilience?

The team is the most important thing you have. I wouldn’t be there without the team. As good as my talents might be, I can’t harness all my talent, especially at this level and especially in the time I’ve been trying to do it. That’s taken a really good, dedicated, skilled team that is with me 100% and I’m with them 100%. You win and you lose together.

How do you maintain team morale and inspire others through setbacks?

There have been times over the past few years when we haven’t agreed on things, so trusting your coaches to have the hard conversations is very important. Those conversations might be around performances, changing equipment, trying to do too much too quickly, or I might not have done as much training as I should have. Being able to have those conversations means you can figure out whether a problem is related to you, or to the team, or whether it’s something that will go away by itself.

What advice about resilience would you give someone facing their own challenges?

There are always people around who will give advice and support for anything that you are going through. There’s always an answer out there for a question that you have and there’s always someone out there who will help find the answer. Accepting advice can be hard to do at times, but it’s essential.

How (if at all) have your experiences changed your perspective on risk?

I always thought risk generally happened in moments when you are being silly, but that’s not the case. Risk can arise at any time and in any place and my experience has told me not to worry about it. I spent years racing bikes, had some bad crashes, and then ended up losing my leg in a car accident, of all things. You don’t get to pick when things like that happen. It means that enjoying the things that you have is very important – you can deal with the setbacks as they come.

Ollie Hill

GB Para snowboarder