A Canadian Australian who wants to reverse Bradbury’s path to Olympic gold

“Reversed Bradbury?” Corey finally answers with a confused look. “That’s interesting.

“Interesting” is code for the dumbest thing he’s ever heard, but at least he’s smiling.

We’ll park Bradbury’s theory and move on to the next topic of conversation: how did he become Australian?

The story begins, he says, with his mother Melanie, who was born in Canada but went to school and university in Sydney from the age of nine.

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She moved to Australia with her parents in the late 1970s. Her father, Ronald Hawkes, helped discover a gold mine in Western Australia.

Hawkes was a geologist and CEO of Plutonic Gold. During the family’s stay in Sydney, his company opened a mine in Western Australia, about 300 kilometers north-east of Meekatharra.

In 1988, Melanie returned to Canada to complete her degree in economics and met and married Trevor Corey.

They spent time in Halifax and Toronto before settling back in their hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick. Corey was born in 1997.

But, as Melanie later explained over the phone from Canada, she never lost her connection to Australia.

“Those were formative years for me and my sister,” she says. “I did so much of my schooling there. I did my HSC.” [Higher School Certificate]and, you know, the extracurricular activities that you do—they’re more a part of you than you realize.

“My sister had a fantastic Australian accent. I think mine has always been kind of mixed – my husband teases me because whenever I come back it’s like a little light switch that comes back on.”

Corey was first introduced to ice hockey by his father, but lost interest in the puck at the age of eight.

“I just want to skate fast,” he told his parents.

He spent the next 15 years speed skating and climbing the ranks until he reached the top six in the country. He then hit a speed hump.

“It turned out that some of the skaters were getting preferential treatment,” his mother explains. “And I always kind of said, ‘You know, if it doesn’t work out here, you can look at Australia.’

The seed was further planted when Corey met former Australian speed skater Richard Nizielski at an international competition in Montreal in 2019. Corey explained that his mother was once a resident Down Under.

Nizielski countered with an offer: “If you can ever come to Australia, we can always use a good skater.”

Then play a hand. Later that year, Corey missed selection for the Canadian team after being knocked out by a teammate during practice and suffering a concussion.

Suddenly, he found his career in limbo and decided to move to Australia.

“I’ve been living on and off since 2019-2020,” says Corey. “I’m usually here for two to three months a year and the other nine or ten I train overseas.

“I have been training in Italy for the last two years with the Italian Olympic short track team.

Corey has made Melbourne his new home, but says he’s yet to find a favorite cafe or fully immerse himself in the city’s lifestyle.

“Occasionally I’ll go to an AFL game, but when I’m here I’m just taking in the sights, exploring the city, going to the beaches,” he says.

“I like to explore the country as a whole.

As for his parents, Trevor and Melanie Corey immediately accepted their son’s choice.

“I know other people, when Brendan went to Australia, they kind of thought about it too, but for them it was like, ‘Oh, Australia is so far away,'” says Melanie.

“Whereas for me there was no hesitation because I was familiar. It wasn’t like ‘here’ and ‘there’. It made sense, like it wasn’t foreign to me at all.”

Melanie says her two children, Brendan and his sister Brianna, have grown up hearing her speak fondly of Australia.

“It was kind of natural for them,” he says. “I think some of the words I would use were Australian slang words and they got used to it.

“For example, the word ‘count’ – a lot of Australians use ‘count’, but here people don’t so much.

“And I would tell him he was ‘cheeky,’ and that was another word that wasn’t used here. So it was kind of in their everyday life.”

Once it became clear that Corey would be representing his new country internationally, he was granted Australian citizenship.

At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, he skated for Australia in the men’s short track 1000 m, but crashed in the quarter-finals.

“In this sport, the top two go through to the next round and I was sitting in third place in the last round, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to try, I don’t want to just sit here and finish third’,” he explains. “I felt I should have tried the pass but I was a bit tight and ended up being too tight.

Which brings us back to Bradbury. Corey was just five when the peroxide blonde Aussie won the unthinkable gold. But even in Canada he knew his story well. They met face to face several times.

“It was an incredible moment in sports,” says Corey. “I don’t think anything like this will ever happen again.

So is the “Reverse Bradbury” concept, winning from the front possible?

“I like being part of the race, I’m in the action,” admits Corey.

“I think the main thing is to use your energy at the perfect moment, not to use it too early and then risk being passed at the end or waiting too late and then you run out of time at the end of the race. You have to plan the attack, make split-second decisions.”

Fortunately, Corey’s mother is more on board with the idea.

“He would love to see that happen,” he says. “There is always a chance, anything can happen in speed skating.

“He definitely has the right attitude and the right work ethic and has a great sense of quick thinking on the ice.”

The Winter Olympics will be broadcast on 9 Network, 9 Now and Tent Sports.