Biography
Article courtesy of The Olympic Winter Institute of Australia

Joanne Carter has the distinction of recording Australia’s best result in ladies figure skating at both the World Championships and the Olympic Games.

At the age of 16, she skated to 11th place in the 1997 World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland, the result qualifying her for the 1998 Winter Olympics. At those Nagano Games 11 months later, she placed 12th.

She won the Piruetten in Hamar and finished 13th at the 1998 World Championships following the Olympics, but her career was then cruelly interrupted by a major knee injury which put her out of competition for almost two years.

Carter returned to domestic competition in the 2001 National Championships, finishing third, then took silver behind Miriam Manzano in 2002 and 2003.

She returned to international competition at the World University Games in Tarvisio, Italy, in January 2003, finishing sixth, then finished in tenth place at Four Continents in January 2004, one place ahead of Manzano.

In the course of her career to date she has won five Australian Championships consecutively from 1994 to 1998. In other international results, she finished second in the Golden Spin of Zagreb in 1996 and 11th in the NHK trophy in 1997.

Since returning from injury she has also place ninth in the Ondrej Nepela in Bratislava in September 2001 the selection event for the Salt Lake 2002 Games - and 11th in the Goodwill Games in Brisbane, also in September 2001.

Carter has successfully juggled the demands of competition and rehabilitation with the workload of a degree in physiotherapy at the University of Sydney, a course she completed in 2003.

She now works as a locum physiotherapist when time permits. Like Manzano, she has set her sights on representing Australia at the 2006 Torino Winter Games.