At the age of 4 she picked up her first set of skis in Dunedin where her family would holiday, and at 8 was scouted to compete overseas in back-to-back winters.
Her parents continue to help her and all the proceeds from their Coastal Cowhide business go towards her programme to compete on the World Cup circuit.
Piera Hudson said she missed the feeling of going fast when she was injured.
However, all of that was put in peril when she had the worst injury of her career in January 2023, suffering a full rupture of her anterior cruciate ligament while training in Europe for the world championships.
After surgery and six months in rehabilitation, she wasn’t recovering as well as expected.
“I was just not making the progress that I was supposed to be at that point with my physios, and we were not even going two steps forward.”
An MRI scan in August 2023 revealed Hudson had 7cm of scar tissue in her knee that was preventing any extension, which was removed with another surgery.
All of a sudden she was starting rehabilitation all over again.
“It was hard and it wasn’t, I’ve honestly had a pretty bad string of injuries in the last four years I’ve had broken legs, broken hands, broken ankles, but all of those things take about 12 weeks to heal.”
She never wanted to give up, and always had a goal to get back to being competitive on the World Cup circuit.
“There was never any doubt about quitting or retiring. I did the injury and two days later I was getting the surgery and I was in an athlete rehab clinic in Austria.”
Surrounded by other recovering athletes was “really nice to have” for motivation.
She returned to the snow in October 2023 and has slowly worked her way back to competing.
Piera Hudson is back competing with a few changes. Photo / Winter Games NZ
She has a new team, coach, and mentality.
“Taking that time away from skiing was healthy for me because I really did learn to fall in love with it and for the first time in my life, I missed skiing.”
She said it was hard to watch her competitors improve while she had sat still, but she was slowly getting her groove back and finding “race pace”.
“It is not about who looks pretty,” Hudson said of her snow discipline. “It is about who goes for it the most.”
The skier competed at the recent Winter Games NZ alpine ski racing programme at Coronet Peak in Queenstown with the first of two FIS Australia New Zealand Cup (ANC) slalom races.
She won the overall ANC yellow bib competition and secured her spot on the World Cup Tour this year, which ranked her in the top 100 for slalom races.
“There is so much muscle memory that it becomes automatic and my focus now is absolutely charging it in races because when I do that the result is good.”
Michaela Gower joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings and Central Hawke’s Bay newsrooms. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke’s Bay news and has a love for sharing stories about farming and rural communities.
