Desert runner hoping for spot in Australian bobsled team at Winter Olympics

Kiara Reddingius' legs are pulsing, arms outstretched — she's sprinting on the ice in a final effort to realise an Olympic dream.

She takes one last push and leaps into the back of her two-woman bobsled.

«You jump in and you pretty much just fold over like a pancake and stay as low as you possibly can,» she says. 

If Reddingius and bobsled pilot Bree Walker perform well, they'll head to the Winter Olympic Games next month.

Reddingius is a brakewoman — she pushes the bobsled to give it momentum at the start.

But Sarah Blizzard is another brakewoman who has also been running well.

The Australian Olympic Committee will announce just one brakewoman to join Walker in Beijing.

Gravity is forcing the sled at 75 kilometres per hour around the winding track at Winterberg in Germany.

This last race could be make or break for the 30-year-old from the small mining town of Leonora in Western Australia's northern Goldfields — a polar opposite environment to where she now speeds through the ice. 

«She's been on a very fast learning curve,» Bobsleigh Skeleton Australia's Hayden Smith says.

«She's shown she can mix it with the best in the world.»

A sharp turn forces the bobsled up the wall.

Reddingius is making good time, but with her usual partner out with COVID, she knows she'd be an unconventional choice. 

Second turn. Tracking well. 

Reddingius doesn't do anything lightheartedly. 

«I go all in,» she says.

A steep turn. The sled speeds up.

Reddingius knows things can turn bad quickly in this sport. In another heat, her sled crashed while she was coming third in the world circuit.

Now, her bobsled reaches 80kph.

The commentator cuts in: «This is the one who's never seen snow, right?»

He's right. The kid from outback WA has come a long way.

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