The Kiwi physio for the world's fastest man Noah Lyles has been back at home for a New Zealand holiday — after one of the "best" but "toughest" years of her life.
Dr Jo Brown grew up in Ōpōtiki, studied at Otago in the 1990s and has since worked with high-performance athletes across 19 sports, representing seven different countries.
For the past three years, she's been focused on the US sprinter Lyles, the new men's 100m Olympic champion, who won in Paris by the closest margin ever, just 0.005 seconds.
Brown, currently based in Queensland, started training her eye for biomechanics competing and coaching as a sporty rural kid in the eastern Bay of Plenty — cycling tens of kilometres to practices from her family farm, and enjoying surfing and swimming.
However, her work behind the scenes as an adult has been unknown to many New Zealanders.
Jo Brown grew up in Ōpōtiki and has had a career supporting the world’s best sportspeople, including one of the stars of the 2024 Olympic Games. (Source: 1 NEWS | Sky)
Her first experiences working with international athletes came with a chance call-up to help the Tongan sevens team playing in Wellington in the early 2000s.
"I just said 'yes and I'll figure out how' ... I was wrapping together bits of tape and creams and bandages from every person I knew to get a kit together," she told 1News.
"The first time I ever ran onto the field and looked up in the Cake Tin and saw all those people, it was a pretty amazing experience."
Soon after, while skiing at Mt Hutt, she unexpectedly helped out the US women's ski team and so grew a love for helping the world's top athletes, with an impressive career she's now written about it in a book, called See Your Elephant.
She wrote the book, in between competitions and training sessions working with Lyles, after he encouraged her to put her expertise into writing.
When asked about Lyle's 100m final, Brown said she was so nervous, she was "almost vomiting".
"When he won, I didn't collapse, but it was so like, 'Oh my God, like, we did it."
The photo finish, won by Lyle's ability to lean at the finish line, was something Brown helped shape in training.
"We identified at the start of the season that his lean was something we needed to work on just for both his high-end speed, but also for the line. And it was obvious that it was going to be potentially down to that lean."
The build-up to Paris meant non-stop travel around the world for Brown last year.
"I had to keep showing up every single day and it's been probably one of the best years of my life and one of the toughest years of my life... I hardly even saw my husband at all."
She believes her hands-on, problem-solving Kiwi ingenuity has been one of her greatest strengths. But coming from New Zealand has also meant she's experienced "tall-poppy syndrome" throughout her career.
"I think it's a huge problem and it really makes me sad. And I've experienced it in Australia and in New Zealand... If we can step outside that... and raise people up, I think it's going to be really powerful in the next like two to five years, but it needs to change now."
Asked if she would move back to New Zealand, Brown said she would one day love to be closer to her family.
"If the All Blacks are looking for a head of performance hook me up. Yeah, I'd have to be in the right role I guess. All my family's still here... And you know, part of me is still here, it always is, it's never left."
