Last month in northern California, 17-year-old American alpine skier Tallulah Proulx carved through the final gates of her last slalom qualifier and slid through the finish. She and her mom sat in their car afterward, suspended between hope and heartbreak in the thin mountain air, not yet knowing if her runs would be enough to get her to the 2026 Winter Olympics in northern Italy.

It was the last day of qualifications.

“My mom and I weren’t sure until we had gotten in the car and were about to leave,” Proulx recounted to CBS News.

The thrilling news arrived moments later: Proulx had qualified, by a slim margin, not only to compete at the Milano Cortina Games, but to make history: She is the first female from the Philippines to compete in a Winter Olympics, and also the country’s youngest Winter Olympian.

“I was like, so happy, so excited, and it didn’t feel real,” she said, adding that her mother had a treat ready for potentially bad news. “My mom had gotten me a cookie and the funny thing is that we were saying this is a celebration cookie — and not a consolation cookie. We were just driving home and were celebrating.”

Any nerves that had trailed her down the mountain melted into laughter, and that last California finish became her starting gate for Cortina.  

“I’m definitely feeling some pressure,” she said. “This is my big, first, like, international competition with this insanely high level of athletes. But the outcome, like, depending whatever the outcome may be, I’ll just keep a positive mindset and just have fun and be here for the experience. And I’m really excited to show the Philippines and show the world what the Philippines can do.”

Every Olympian’s story begins somewhere far smaller than a packed stadium. For Proulx, it began close to the snow — at toddler height. She was just three years old when she clicked into her first pair of skis. 

Growing up in Berkeley, California, Proulx’s parents made the three-hour pilgrimage to Lake Tahoe for family weekends on the mountain with her and her brother. The rhythm of those early turns slowed at age seven, however, when her mom’s job took the family to Iowa.

“Iowa is very flat,” she laughed. “There is one little hill called Sundown Mountain. Shout out Sundown! And they only had a race team.”

The mountain, though, kept calling. When she was 10, her parents enrolled her in a full-time, six-day-a-week ski program in Vail, Colorado. A year later, in 2018, she moved again, this time to Park City, Utah, to keep chasing speed, snow, and seconds.

“My family was incredibly supportive of my journey from the beginning. They are the ones who like, sent me to Vail to pursue my passion, even though it wasn’t necessarily for all,” Proulx said. “It was kind of difficult for the family so they ended up moving to Park City, but they were ones who believed in me and believed in my dream.”

Choosing the final leg of Proulx’s path to achieving her Olympic dream came down to both strategy, and realism. She and her family had to decide if she should try to represent Team USA, or Team Philippines.

“We definitely were, first of all, thinking of the best and easiest way,” she told CBS News. “There are far fewer athletes competing for the Philippines than there are for the U.S. For the U.S., it would likely take — I would probably have to take a gap year, work your way up [to] the U.S. Ski team — and only like a few of them are here at the Olympics.”

So the family settled on Proulx, a dual national, competing under the flag of her Filipino heritage. 

“I definitely would not be here where I am right now if I was under the U.S. flag,” she admitted.

At the Opening Ceremony in Cortina on Feb. 6, Proulx carried that decision into the bright lights, walking into the Olympic stadium beneath the red, white and blue — and yellow sun and stars — of the Republic of the Philippines, as the country’s flag bearer.

Now she hopes the tracks she leaves behind will become someone else’s trail forward.

“I would say if you’re passionate and surrounded by the right people who are supportive of you and you have that passion in your heart and also a kindness to others, I think that you can pursue whatever you want,” she urged any young fans and aspiring athletes following her journey.

To young Filipinos and Filipinas watching, in particular, she offered pride as fuel for their own climbs.

“You know, I think that Filipinos are one of the most supportive-type people around,” she said. “I just want to say to all the Filipinos out there watching, like, we’re so strong, we can do it … be proud in our identity – and I think that it’s so important that, you know, I’m here for the Winter Olympics, being like a first step.”

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The self-professed white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslims in New Zealand’s deadliest mass shooting was pleased to be charged with terrorism and wanted to be described as a terrorist, his former lawyer told a court deciding if the man was in a fit state to admit to his crimes.

Brenton Tarrant, 35, was sentenced to life in prison without a chance of parole after pleading guilty to terrorism, murder and attempted murder for his hate-fueled massacre of worshippers including children at two Christchurch mosques during Friday prayers in 2019. The Australian man is now seeking to recant the admissions he made in 2020, saying solitary confinement and other prison conditions made him irrational and mentally unwell.

New Zealand’s Court of Appeal in Wellington is considering Tarrant’s bid in a five-day hearing. If the three-judge panel discards his guilty pleas, the case would return to court for trial.

Tarrant first pleaded not guilty to the charges he faced, then reversed his position before his trial was due to begin. He told the appeals court Monday that he felt forced into his admissions by “nervous exhaustion” brought on by constant solitary confinement, surveillance by prison staff, lack of access to reading materials and almost no contact with the outside world.

Lawyers who represented him during the period when he entered both sets of pleas told the court Tuesday that they had laid a complaint about his prison conditions early in his confinement. Prison officials were dismissive of his grievances, the lawyers said.

They said, however, that restrictions on Tarrant eased later and they didn’t think his environment had harmed his ability to make decisions. Tarrant said Monday that he had masked symptoms of serious mental illness in an effort not to appear weak or to reflect poorly on others who held his racist views.

Crown lawyers suggested to Tarrant on Monday that he had many opportunities to raise concerns about his mental health and or request a postponement of his trial. No witness has so far agreed with Tarrant that his conditions were so onerous and his mental state so poor that he wasn’t fit to plead guilty.

One issue at the heart of the case is whether Tarrant always intended to admit the charges or planned to contest them. Tarrant said Monday that he had meant to defend himself at a trial, while his lawyers said Tuesday that they were sure he intended to plead guilty due to the overwhelming evidence against him, which included his Facebook livestream of the massacre and a racist manifesto he posted online before the attack.

Shane Tait, who previously acted for Tarrant, said his client had wanted to argue during a trial that he had been defending New Zealand — a country he migrated to with a view to committing the attack — from immigrants. Tait assured Tarrant that such a defense wasn’t available under New Zealand law, he told the court.

“Brenton, what am I going to tell the jury if we go to trial?” Tait said he had asked Tarrant. His client had responded, “Don’t worry, it won’t get that far,” Tait said.

Both Tait and Tarrant’s other then-lawyer Jonathan Hudson said it was important to their client that he be convicted on the terrorism charge and he refused to allow his lawyers to attempt to negotiate it away in exchange for guilty pleas to the murder and attempted murder charges.

“He wanted to be described as a terrorist,” Hudson said.

Bids to appeal convictions or sentences in New Zealand must be made within 20 working days. Tarrant was two years late in seeking an appeal, filing documents in 2022.

He told the court Monday that his bid had been late because he hadn’t had access to the information required to make it.

The judges are expected to release their decision at a later date. If they reject Tarrant’s attempt to have his guilty pleas discarded, a later hearing will focus on his bid to appeal his sentence.

The hearing was the first time that Tarrant, who appeared by video conference from prison, had been seen or heard from in court for years. He appeared pale and thin, with a shaved head and black-framed glasses.

Some of those bereaved or injured by his violence watched a live feed of proceedings from a courtroom in Christchurch, telling reporters afterward of their exasperation and anger that he was allowed to keep revisiting his case in court.

“There’s definitely no remorse at all,” said Rashid Omar, whose son Tariq Omar was murdered, adding that the proceedings appeared to be a game to Tarrant.

“We are very, very strong,” Omar said. “We’re not going to be bullied by him.”