February 2023
It left like flying, only instead of soaring she was spinning. Pulling her body around in flips and spins until the ground got too close and she had to correct her board so she could land flat. It was also the only time that her mind truly went blank. From the moment she gave herself the last push off the end of the jump, to the moment her landing was absorbed through her knees. Blank.
In a way, she was really flying.
As her snowboard connected with the snow underneath her toes, a smile spread across Arabella's face as she triumphantly held her hand up in the air, the Red Bull can grasped within her gloved fingers. At the bottom of the run, Alex poked his head out from behind his camera lens, checking his footage.
"So?" Arabella asked, getting impatient after she stopped in front of him and undid her bindings. "Did it work?" She yanked her boots free of her board, picking it up she tucked it underneath her arm.
"It worked."
"Finally." She said giving a small fist pump into the air in front of her. "Only took a few hours." Alex nodded, pushing himself up off the snow, still going through the photos he had taken. Further up the hill, her coach, Dimitri, was cheering from his spot near the jump as he put on his board and came down to meet them.
"Those pictures are going to be sick, Bella!" He called as he carved his way down the slope. "Did we get it?"
"We got it." Alex smiled giving a nod as he slid the camera's lens cap back on before putting it safely back into its carrying case.
"Do we have time for one more?" Dimitri asked, seeming more excited than Alex and Bella. Bella looked up at the run, the jumps. Almost every molecule in her body begged her to go back up and throw herself off another few jumps.
"No, we don't." She sighed, forcing herself to turn her back to the jumps. "I have to be in hair and makeup at one."
"Makeup?" Alex sounded confused. "They know you're wearing a helmet right?"
"For the interview. I don't just get to do the jump and then go home."
"Hard being in the spotlight isn't it?" Dimitri gave her a light nudge.
"Maybe I should have just let someone else take gold." She shrugged. "I bet the silver medalist got a vacation." Dimitri snorted.
"That's the champion mindset." She smiled, giving him a light shove back.
Snowboarding has always been her safe haven, her freedom from her everyday life. It was the one time in her day when nothing else mattered. While she was boarding down a run, she was no longer Arabella Van Dijk, Olympic Gold Medalist, and world champion. Even today, while she was practicing for the Red Bull athlete photo shoot, when she boarded down she was just Bella, a girl who had nothing to be nervous about.
"I'm going for another one." She said and before her coach could protest, she tucked her board tighter under her arm and started for the lift.
"Tell him we're going to be late?" Dimitri said to Alex before he followed, leaving Alex about to protest.
Not that she should be nervous. She had met many people before, famous people. Shaun White and Scotty James were her two idols. Snowboarders that she had looked up to in the world of freestyle snowboarding for most of her career. She had been nowhere near as nervous to meet them as she was to meet Max Verstappen.
It was because he was now a two-time world champion in a sport that only had 20 competitors in the entire world. At least that's the reason she was telling herself. Deep down she knew she was nervous because of what this interaction would mean to her father. Formula one had always been something they shared growing up. Arabella always thought that her father's greatest disappointment was that his adventurous and adrenaline-addicted child didn't go into motor racing.
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The Teammate
Fanfiction**There will be some edits over the next few months** Arabella Van Dijk is a well-known Dutch snowboarder, especially after taking her place on the podium at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. As a Red Bull sponsored athlete no less. After her...
