Winter Olympics 2026: Zoe Atkin wins halfpipe bronze for Team GB’s fifth medal

The top of the icy Winter Olympics halfpipe is a world away from the Californian climes of Stanford University.

And yet it is where Atkin’s two worlds collide.

As an Olympic medal-winning skier – and a student at one of the United States’ most prestigious colleges.

Atkin, who was born and raised in the US to a Malaysian mother and English father, studies symbolic systems – “a mix of cognitive science, studying the brain, how it works and the mechanisms of that, combined with computer science and studying those machines,” as she told BBC Sport before the Games.

Olympic halfpipes are 6.7m high, with Atkin achieving an amplitude of more than 5m during her final.

That means, should something go wrong mid-air, athletes have a near 12m drop on to pure ice, a risk Atkin had previously struggled to cope with.

“I have learned so much that has helped me so much being an athlete in an action sport. The tricks and manoeuvres that we’re doing inherently have a lot of risk to them,” she said.

“I’ve struggled with fear a lot in the past, especially when I was younger. Learning about the mechanisms of the brain has really helped me apply those learnings and new mindsets and be able to test those theories, in practice, in my sport.

“It’s in those really hard moments that you show yourself what is possible and that is when you really push your limits.

“I’ve been able to find my power in that.”