Janine Shepherd
Australian cross country skier
Janine Shepherd, is an Australian author, aerobatics pilot and former cross-country skier. Shepherd's career as an athlete ended when she sustained life-threatening injuries when hit by a truck during a training bike ride, while in contention to win Australia's first-ever medal at the Winter Olympics. She survived and her story later became the focus of national attention, as well as a popular telemovie.
Biography
Shepherd had been an athletics champion as a child, and settled on cross-country skiing. After achieving success on the World circuit, she was given the offer of training with the Canadian team in the leadup to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. In 1986, Shepherd was cycling through the Blue Mountains in New South Wales as part of her training regime, when she was hit by a vehicle, suffering massive injuries. She suffered a broken neck and back, lost five litres of blood, had severe lacerations to her abdominal area. Her right leg was ripped open, her collarbone and five ribs were fractured, and she suffered serious internal injuries, but she survived. She was told that she would be reliant on a wheelchair for the rest of her life, and would never bear children.
Over the next few years, Shepherd recovered.
“Janine Shepherd” enters the record as australian cross country skier. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Janine, Shepherd and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6154579. VIAF identifies the subject as 92156479. The Library of Congress control number is n2016033212. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Janine Shepherd” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.