They were the words of Bree’s boyfriend Christian, who picked up the phone in Europe and called her dad, Mick Walker in Cairns – right in the middle of her preparation for the upcoming Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.

Christian could sense something wasn’t quite right for the monobob and bobsleigh athlete and only one person who could address it.

“I got really homesick,” Bree said.

“I hadn’t been home since September 2019. Normally I don’t get very homesick. Just a little bit of FaceTime does it usually.

“But I guess it was a really intense time with COVID and being away from my family for so long, I’ve never been away from my family for longer than two years. I really wasn’t performing very good or feeling very good about everything.”

Being a bobsledder on the World Cup tour from Australia requires a unique commitment and resilience.

It is one of the most time-intensive sports to train and compete in, you never have a home crowd or home ground advantage and the climate is different to from where Bree grew up in Mount Evelyn.

For most of her sporting life, Bree was accustomed to seeing her dad everywhere she went.

“When I was very young, a 6-year-old, I was a horse rider.

“There were a lot of not-so glamorous 5am starts on Sunday mornings in the freezing cold, where dad would get up to get the horse ready while I was still staying in bed for a little while and then getting myself ready.

“By the time I’d roll out dad would have the horse float hitched up to the car and the horse ready to load up. I would just have to roll into the car, hardly able to coordinate myself because it was really early.

“When we would roll into a horse show there wasn’t many dads around, it was mainly horse mums. Dad would be there platting my horse’s mane and doing all the things the mums would normally do. It was just us two really running our show for the first few years.”

Mick was always ready to spring into action if there was anything he could do to make Bree’s experience better.

“One time my horse didn’t want to go over the jumps in the cross-country competition. The horse just didn’t want to go that day, we didn’t know what was up with him.

“Dad ran down to the jump I was stuck at and he helped me get this horse over the jump. Dad then proceeded to run the rest of the cross-country course with me so I could get through the competition there.

“That’s one of my biggest memories of when I knew dad would do absolutely everything for me in order to be able to compete.”

From horse riding Bree transitioned to athletics, with Mick still finding ways to be as useful as possible.

“Every single weekend dad would come down to the track in order to be able to help us all compete and participate, because it was mainly parents running the show there.

“Then as I progressed through the ages, you were able to go and compete all around Australia. Dad was always by my side. 

“There were special routines I always needed from dad. He never actually stood at the finish line to watch the end of my races. He stood at the top of the 100m straight as I was coming around in the 400m, because that’s where I needed the help most.

“I needed the final encouragement home for the last 100m. Dad would always stand there and scream and yell at me to get my arms moving. All throughout my sporting career it was just me and dad.”

So what was Mick’s biggest motivation to be a ‘Mr Fix It’ for Bree?

“When we did sport with Bree, she had this special gift that both my wife and I could see there was something there,” Mick said.

“She was destined to do something (in sport). It was one of those things, somehow we would make it happen.

“In the horse riding days we didn’t have a lot of funds. But what we did was – I won sales at two different horse shows and turned that into something for Breanna.

“Her first Australian title entry in athletics in Sydney, once again we didn’t have much money. But I had a really nice motorbike sitting in my shed and thought ‘well I’ve had my fun,’ so I sold it and gave the money to her.”

With his daughter spending most of her time overseas these days, he has adapted his approach to have the biggest possible impact on Bree.

“Bree and I can be really blunt to each other talking on the phone.

“One time she was struggling and she rang me up on a Thursday night before a competition in Innsbruck, Austria and said ‘dad I’m really struggling with this’.

I said “just get some mongrel in you and get it done.” 

“That’s all it has to be with Bree.

“Then when I was sitting at home watching her compete, she wins the gold medal.”

“It’s not like dad is a Bobsleigh expert, but he knows me very well,” Bree said. 

“Sometimes I guess I’m thinking too much when I’m wanting it to be perfect. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be perfect, like dad said ‘let the mongrel out’ and sometimes I forget that because it’s not like I have people who have known me for 29 years around me.”

When Mick heard Christian’s request for his presence in Germany to help Bree finish off the 2020-21 season, it did not take long for Mick to show up.

A week later Mick had completed the 24+ hours travel from Cairns to Germany and linked up with Bree, to stay with her for seven weeks until the end of the season.

“He was such good help behind the scenes. Dad would do the cooking and the cleaning. He’s getting old, sorry dad, but he can still lift the sled and move all our equipment around just as good as he was for the horse riding.

“I don’t know if I would have got through the season with as much success as I had without dad there. My best week of my career was in Winterberg (Germany) and that was the first week my dad was there, so I credit that a lot to him.

“A lot goes on behind the scenes that nobody really sees. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that I don’t even clock.

“It’s a full day affair just to be able to do three runs that take one minute each.”

Mick was the glue for Bree and the team.

“I was cooking and cleaning, but perhaps the most important thing I did on the road was being a listening post,” Mick said.

“I’d sit there like a Blue Heeler, not say anything and just listen. Then she’d feel better.

“It was a pleasure to be with her and the girls. They welcomed me into their group and it was so good.

“After training and after dinner – it’s not relax time – Bree and her coach would sit down and look at an hour of her footage.”

What Christian saw Mick could best help with was improving her state of mind.

Bree was already doing a lot of things right to find herself consistently hovering in the top 5 of the monobob world rankings.

In that group it’s so tight, despite some athletes having teams bigger than Bree’s, each of those athletes have the experience and tactical nous to win an event on any given day.

What can separate an athlete from the pack is having a clear mind and being in a good place with your mental wellbeing.

“Your approach to the sport plays a huge factor, especially at that high end, if you’re not on that day that could be the day you drop from second or third to fifth because that’s how easy it is to drop,” Bree said.

“You can’t let your competitors have that edge on you.”

Mick absolutely loves his daughter, who owns Australia’s best-ever finish in any Bobsleigh discipline at the Olympics (5th in monobob on her Olympic debut at Beijing 2022), and is extremely proud of everything she’s done.

“We’ve had a pretty special bond for a long, long time,” Mick said.

“With her sister and brother we’re all a pretty tight family.”

“She always puts her best foot forward and there has never been one time has she disappointed.”

Right now Bree is in off-season training and returns to competition on the ice at the end of October. In the new year the focus will very much be on the world championships in Switzerland and on the world cups.

“Dad’s very keen to come and continue travelling with us for the next season. I think we’ll try and bring him out,” Bree said.

Having achieved a top five result in her debut Olympics, Bree is doing everything in her power to challenge the top of the leaderboard at Milan0-Cortina 2026.