26 Mar 2009

Australia’s winter athletes have enjoyed great results as they compete against the world’s best in the attempt to qualify for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, held 12–28 February, and the Paralympic Winter Games on 12–21 March.

The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) works in joint partnership with the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia to provide top-level coaching and sports science, and world-class training facilities for winter sport athletes in alpine, mogul and aerial freestyle skiing; ski cross; half pipe, snowboard cross and alpine snowboarding; short track speed skating, skeleton and figure skating.

Winter Paralympians are also supported by the AIS, who work in partnership with the Australian Paralympic Committee to provide specialist training, coaching and facilities.

Currently Australia’s Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls are gaining valuable experience in elite competitions around the world, and have already had plenty of successes to celebrate.

At the FIS Freestyle World Championships in February in Inawashiro, Japan, AIS athlete Jacqui Cooper became the first Australian skier to win three world championship medals, taking the bronze in aerial skiing. Fellow AIS athletes Jenny Owens and Sam Hall also performed well, Owens making the final 16 of the ski cross event and Hall finishing 13th in the dual moguls.

Australia’s Torah Bright claimed her third United States Open half pipe snowboarding title and, with AIS athlete Holly Crawford, got a chance to preview the 2010 Olympic half pipe venue, at the 2009 LG Snowboard FIS World Cup. Both skiers finished in the top ten in the Cypress Mountain pipe.

In other competitions around the globe, AIS skier Lydia Lassila clinched the 2009 aerial skiing World Cup title by finishing third in the final event of the season in Moscow and AIS downhill skier Jono Brauer won the giant slalom at the FIS event in Flumserberg, Switzerland.

The AIS’s Tatiana Borodulina became the first Australian to win a World Cup at the Samsung ISU World Cup Short Track event in Dresden, Germany. Fellow AIS winter athletes Michelle Steele and Emma Lincoln-Smith competed in the Bauhaus FIBT Bobsled and Skeleton World Championships at Lake Placid in the US, Lincoln-Smith producing Australia’s best ever skeleton world title result, a fifth placing.

Australian Paralympic winter athletes also produced impressive performances in recent competitions, particularly downhill skiers Shannon Dallas and Cameron Rahles-Rahbula who each won gold medals at the 2009 IPC Alpine Skiing World Championship — Dallas’s in the men’s super giant slalom, and Rahles-Rahbula’s in the men’s slalom.

Australia expects to send around 35 athletes to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games and about 12 alpine skiers to the Paralympic Games. Australia’s Winter Olympic team should include ten athletes who have made it onto World Cup podiums - Torah Bright, Holly Crawford and Nate Johnstone (snowboard halfpipe), Damon Hayler and Alex Pullin (snowboard cross), Dale Begg-Smith (mogul skiing), Jacqui Cooper and Lydia Lassila (aerial skiing), Michelle Steele (skeleton) and Tatiana Borodulina (short track speed skating), so the chances of being able to match (or better) the two medals won at both the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympic Games are looking bright.