Stephanie Hickey

Nicknamed 'Little Miss Sunshine', 'Stickey' and 'Freggle',[1] Hickey was born on 3 July 1985 in Melbourne, Victoria.[2] She is from the Mt Buller area,[3] and lived in Brighton and Prahran in 2010.[2][4] She is 1.65 metres (5 ft 5 in) tall and weighs 60 kilograms (130 lb).[2][5]

Hickey attended Victorian College of the Arts, where she studied musical theatre. She also studied at Deakin University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts.[1][6] She worked for the Seven Network as a Victorian snow reporter in 2006 and 2007.[7] In 2007, she served as a live presenter for Going Ballistyx.[7] She started working as an East Coast MC for the Billabong Girls Get Out There surf events in 2007.[7]

In addition to snowboarding, she competed in dancing for ten years.[1]

Hickey competes in snowboard slalom and snowboard cross.[7] She has been affiliated with the Victorian Institute of Sport[8] and coached by Lukas Prem.[1] While snowboarding, she has injured herself several times, including a September 2008 crash that dislocated five ribs, a January 2009 tear of her medial collateral ligament while competing in Austria, and a 2010 concussion and memory loss following a crash.[1]

Hickey began competitive snowboarding when she was sixteen years old, competing in snowboard slalom in Australia's domestic season.[7] Her first international competition was the 2003 World Snowboard Championships, where she competed in the snowboard slalom and snowboard cross events.[7] In 2005, she competed at the USASA Junior Nationals, and participated in a training camp at Copper Mountain in the lead up to the event.[9] She competed at the 2006 and 2008 Australian National Championship in snowboard cross,[4] and at an event in September 2008 in Argentina.[1] At the Snowboarding World Cup in Chapelco, Argentina in the 2008/09 skiing season, she finished twelfth, her best World Cup event finish as of February 2010; the following year, she finished fifteenth.[7] She competed at an event in Bad Gasten, Austria in January 2009 and made the finals at the New Zealand Open the same year.[1] During the 2009 World Cup season, she qualified as a top 16 competitor.[4] That year, she also competed at the Australian and New Zealand Championship.[4] In the 2009/10 skiing season, in addition to the Snowboarding World Cup, she competed in three other World Cup events. A top thirty finish qualified her for the 2010 Winter Olympics in late January.[7][10]

Hickey was 24 years old at the 2010 Winter Olympics.[3] In her first snowboard cross race, she had a time of 1min 35.26sec. She did not qualify for the finals after she fell during her second race and finished in 18th position overall in the qualifying round.[3][11] Only the top 16 snowboarders advanced to the finals.[7][12]