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Cortina d’Ampezzo: Desi Johnson isn’t a name that bobs up in the hallowed ranks of Australian celebrities, as a 24-year-old bobsledder who has never won an Olympic medal, recorded a hit single or married a Hemsworth.
But Johnson has the same number of Instagram followers as Russell Crowe and 2½ times the 553,000 that Australia’s premier tennis player Alex De Minaur boasts. She leaves the entirety of AFL and NRL players in the social media shade.
Australian bobsled athlete Desi Johnson.Credit: Getty
Desi’s Instagram following is a whopping 1.3 million, matching Crowe. Her TikTok flock is even larger – 1.6 million. Bailey Smith, the AFL footballer whose face and abs – and attitude – launched a thousand headlines, has an Instagram congregation of just 418,000, and around 400,000 on TikTok.
The NRL pin-up player Reece Walsh’s 666,000 Instagram idolaters are barely half Johnson’s hordes.
Most Australians – well, most over 45 – couldn’t spot this bobsledder in a line-up of the lycra-clad or recognise her name on Pitt or Bourke Streets. Yet, here in Cortina, she is more likely to be recognised, as one of the travelling Australian bobsleigh contingent affirmed.
A local Italian (guy), noting the accent or green and gold gear, asked one, “Do you know Desi Johnson?”
The photogenic Johnson encapsulates the evolving nature of fame, too, in that her following is entirely about social media and her postings of well-tended images of her training regime.
And it’s from this vast following that Desi earns a living and thereby funds her bobsleigh adventure.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing without social media,” said Johnson, referring to her bobsleigh career, which evolved from a ruinous run with injury, such as multiple foot surgeries, and an invitation from her sled partner at the Olympics, Sarah Blizzard. A fracture in her back (L4) made heptathlon unsustainable.
A former sprinter-turned-heptathlete, who was ranked first in Australia at under-18 level, Johnson’s beginnings as a magnet on TikTok and Instagram (she has about 200,000 YouTube fans) were as a heptathlete during COVID, as she charted what she called her “journey”.
“I started off doing home workouts … during lockdown and people started to catch on to it. The videos went viral and then after lockdown, I started showing everybody my journey, my injuries, me trying to get back to sprinting.”
Her following, at first predominantly TikTok, careened into large Instagram numbers. She reached 500,000 as an athlete posting just before crossing to bobsled. Once she jumped into the sled, the numbers went Kardashian.
“And then when I started blogging my bobsleigh journey as well, people just went crazy.”
One telling measure of the social media avalanche is that, in the time between speaking to this masthead and publication, Desi’s Instagram grew by another 100,000 to 1.3 million. She had vaulted to Maximus level, as in Crowe, but this was unlikely to prove her maximum.
“I didn’t realise you can monetise off that,” she said of her now full-time job as a social media performer. “And when I did, it was honestly incredible.
“I did take it on as a full-time job about two years ago. It’s just crazy how well it’s worked out.”
The USA and Australia provide the largest cohorts of her online fans, followed by Europe.
Johnson only relocated from athletics to bobsled – there was a flirtation with rugby sevens in the interim – in 2023. It took her barely three years to become an Olympian in a hitherto alien sport that she hardly knew existed beforehand.
“I honestly had no idea what the sport really was. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into at all. I’d never touched the snow, I hadn’t been to Europe.”
Bobsled is expensive, the monobob and pair of two-person sleds that her racing partner Blizzard bought for them cost around $60,000 each.
“We are completely self-funded, like we fund ourselves overseas for months in Europe,” said Johnson.
Johnson and Blizzard are almost as improbable bobsleigh Olympians as the famed Cool Runners of Jamaica. Johnson, the brakeswoman in the sled, was raised in Queensland, five hours from the Gold Coast, where the bulk of her immediate family now resides. Blizzard, the sled’s pilot, is from Ararat in Victoria’s west and also a fugitive from athletics, having run in the Stawell Gift final four times.
Expectations for the pair in Cortina are, well, not enormous. Bobsled team races are owned by the Germans, with the Americans next in line, because they have faster sleds, the product of millions of dollars spent and F1-style technology.
Hurtling at up to 130 km/h, bobsleigh looks only marginally safer than abseiling. For Johnson, though, the sport has proven a sanctuary from the injuries that beset her in athletics.
“I’ve been feeling pretty healthy doing this sport and sort of safer,” she said.
Wherever her sled finishes in this Olympics, Desi Johnson will be watched.
The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.
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