Parker raced from her hotel in the mountains of Zhangjiakou on Wednesday to the alpine skiing runs a couple of hours away in Yangqing. Just after 12pm she was at the top of a slope that carves its way through a hostile and arid landscape – one that has seen gold medallists come unstuck, let alone an Olympic debutant running on no sleep.

“Honestly. . . I just took a big breath and said ‘you know what you are capable of. Everything is going to be OK’.”

Clipped in and ready to push out, Parker was about to achieve what thousands of elite skiers have not – an Olympic run.

Unfortunately, it did not end as she or her family in Australia or friends in the US, who had scrambled to get her to the airport, had wanted.

Parker did not finish her first run after she fell forward halfway down the challenging slope. She regained control but not enough to stop her missing a gate, sending her out of the competition as quickly as she had entered it.

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When she eventually arrived at the bottom of the slope after a week-long mission to get her to Beijing, she was not yet ready to talk publicly.

“I had to call my family to let all of my feelings out,” she said. “There have just been so many unknowns and it has been a really big and emotional rollercoaster. It’s by far the most emotional I’ve ever been.”

Parker said she had learnt a lot about herself through the ordeal.

“I knew I had a pretty strong mind. But I feel like I’ve really shown that in the past month,” she said. “I’m just exhausted right now.”

Parker now has 48 hours to try and enjoy being an Olympian in Beijing before being put back on a plane for COVID safety reasons.

The disease that almost took away everything she had worked for, gave her just enough of a window to fulfil her Olympic dream.

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