Four-time world snowboarding champion and six-time Swiss champion, Ursula Bruhin tells her story.

In a sport where new talent is constantly emerging, former snowboarding superstar Ursula Bruhin maintained incredible success.

She was world number one in 2000, 2002 and 2003, world number two for 2004 and 2005 and in 2006 world number three — the same year that she placed seventh in the parallel giant slalom at the Olympics.

Only three years after she started snowboarding, Ursula started competing in 1994 at the regional and Swiss-cup races and was immediately finishing in the top-ten of each race.

Without any professional coaching, just four years later she won the Swiss championship.

“I got to this point without a coach and without special training camps,” Ursula says. “I was also working full-time as a pastry chef during this time.”

Then, just as she was on top of the world, that year, 1998, Ursula remembers hitting “something of a crisis”.

“I got injured, had surgery on my knee and then my boyfriend left me. I put on weight because I could not exercise and my self esteem dropped. I felt angry with my boyfriend.”

Under this dark cloud, Ursula noticed her sister had a very different approach to life.

“My sister went to a Bible Study School and seemed so happy. She said to me, ‘I believe God wants the best for you, but first you need to forgive your ex-boyfriend’.” Ursula said that she couldn’t forgive him, and her sister suggested that Ursula should ask God to give her that strength.

Ursula says that their family had grown up going to church, but she had gone “only out of a sense of duty” and after leaving home, she stopped going.

Now, in the midst of despair, Ursula prayed that God would give her strength to forgive.

Ursula continues; “He answered my prayer. I was able to forgive my ex-boyfriend and suddenly I was free from hate and anger.”

Amazed by the way God had delivered her, Ursula started attending church again, where she says she was “deeply moved” by God’s love for her and accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour.

“I started a new life as a Christian. The answer to my prayer showed me that if you ask God, He will help, bless and heal you. Gradually, my faith grew and I came to see God as the source of power. I realized that whether I won or lost was in God’s hands.”

In August of that year, Ursula turned professional and climbed up the ISF World-rankings from number 17 to number two.

From 1999, she participated in the Swiss snowboard team, and she says her top finishes were helped by “good teamwork”, team-spirit and “hard and specific training”.

When asked why God would want her to be involved in sport, Ursula answers; “Before I became a Christian, I was afraid that if I turned my life over to God I would have to give up snowboarding. Then I was torn between my desire to know God and being a professional athlete. Deep down, I hoped God wanted me to stay in snowboarding and so I prayed for an answer. That’s when I felt a deep sense of calm come over me and a reassurance that God did indeed want me to stay in snowboarding.”

One of Ursula’s biggest disappointments was missing the 2002 Olympics when as world number one, she under-performed at the trials, then won the 2002 World Cup, yet was still not selected.

“I was really disappointed,” she remembers. “I could not understand why, that if God wanted the best for me, I would not be going to the Olympics. Then I came to realize that if God wanted the best for me, then not going to the Olympics must be God’s best for me. The support friends gave me was my gold medal. Perhaps that was what God wanted me to learn.

“Sometimes I feel challenged about my motivation in winning. Once I was sick and I asked God why this happened in the middle of an important competition and told Him that He needed to give me strength. He did and I won. It reminded me of Isaiah chapter 55, verse 9, ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts’.

“In the next race I was completely healthy and sure I would win, but I crashed. That experience taught me that winning was God’s gift, not something that came from my own strength.

“Even if you fail, God can make the best of it. He stands behind you and carries you through the difficult times. I don’t know how I would survive without God. I have learned that knowing Jesus and being loved by Him is the only thing that can really satisfy me.”

In 2006, Ursula again found herself in the trials for the Olympics. During her intense training she began to find it increasingly difficult to stay motivated, so she prayed and asked God, “Do you really want me to go for it?” Ursula recalls that she asked for a sign if she should continue or not: “One day, I was jogging and listening to music when a peaceful calm came over me and I felt God say ‘Yes’. The memory of that moment kept me going when the training was hard.”

After such long and arduous training, Ursula felt sure she would win first place at the Olympics, but as she realized in the final runs that she would not win, she noticed joy and happiness filling her heart. She realized that the Bible verse which had been guiding her throughout the year “The joy of the Lord is your strength”, from Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 10 had come to life for her.

At the end of that season, Ursula retired from professional snowboarding. Now she embraces new challenges, including motivational speaking, participating in sports camps and private coaching.