Our aerial ski team need no longer train in a dam filled with mud. The New South Wales government have announced $5.9 million of funding towards an international training facility with a ski jump ramp in Lennox Head on the North Coast.
Park City Utah has been calling our Olympic and World Cup winning aerial team to the slick water ramp facility annually. It is here they perfect their twists, turns and jumps and here they continue to be Australia’s most successful Winter Olympic team to date. Yet our gold, silver and bronze Olympic medalists and FIS World Cup Champions have campaigned for years for a training facility on home soil with little success. Until now.
Soon they need only go up the road where the new high performance centre will no doubt attract international athletes to also train.
“This facility will finally give us the edge over our competitors” says Lydia Lassila, Winter Olympics gold and bronze medalist, to SnowsBest.
“Lennox Head is the perfect athlete environment. It will bring Aussie talent to winter sport where our athletes can train on home soil. We will create wholistic athletes- ones that can continue their education, find part time work, even raise families and ultimately have balance in their lives.”
Lassila has been a huge campaigner for the training facility and her Will To Fly documentary helped get politicians over the line. Australia’s aerial team spend the majority of every year training and competing overseas. Now they can train at home.
“I believe this will give athletes longevity and prolong their careers in sport” Lassila continues.
“Personally, it just feels really good to get this over the line! I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to use this facility but I sure hope to. In my situation, continuing in this sport with a family is a huge challenge as everyone has to be uprooted for a life on the road. Ultimately our athletes should be able to retire on their own terms, not because they don’t have anywhere to train in Australia.”
Dani Scott is a FIS World Cup medal winning aerialist for Australia and a real contender for Olympic podiums in the next Winter Olympics in Korea.
“I started skiing 10 years ago and since then I have had about 2-3 months out of those years at home” explains Scott. “I don’t take the opportunities that I have had along the way for granted, but to be able to establish a stable and supportive environment where we aren’t surviving at the mercy of other countries, will be huge. I love Australia and I miss it.”
Fellow aerials team member, Samantha Wells, won her first FIS World Cup podium this last competition season. She too travels, a lot.
“For the Australian team this means that we can take back control over our training times and our access to the ramps” says Wells. “You’ve seen what we can do working under the terms of other teams, imagine what we will be able to do when training on our own watch!”
Perhaps the best news is for future aerialists and the growth of aerials as a sport for Australia. David Morris is our only male aerialist to win an Olympic Silver medal (Sochi Olympics)
“This opens the door for opportunities to start more accessible development programs that don’t involve months overseas to find it if people are good or not” says Morris of the new facility.
“It gives access to talented people who may have never considered trying winter sports and wouldn’t know where to start, now we have somewhere to start.”
Dani Scott had to wait until she was 16 to start training as the Australian team didn’t have the resources to send younger athletes overseas. Now they can send them to New South Wales instead.
“This water-ramp is going to be huge for the future of Freestyle Snow-sports in Australia” says Wells. “Not only will winter sports gain exposure and familiarity within the Aussie community, the building of the water-ramp facility makes winter sports so much more accessible to the everyday Australian in a very unexpected way.
By allowing further development of the current athlete pathway from recreational skier to world class athlete, The NSW Government Water-ramp Facility really will shape the future of Aussie freestyle snow skiing.”
Moguls, slopestyle, halfpipe and big air athletes will no doubt also be welcoming the news as they also train at the Park City water ramp facility (open in northern summer) and can soon train in Australia twelve months a year at Lennox Head.
