Perisher Moves Mountain To Help Olympic Team Prospects (13-Aug-09)

Perisher, Australia, August 13, 2009 - Perisher ski resort has thrown its weight

Perisher ski resort has thrown its weight behind Australia's Vancouver Winter Olympic campaign, building a replica of the key features of the snowboard-cross and ski-cross course that will be used in the 2010 Games.

Snowboard-cross and ski-cross races are won, more often than not, by the racer who gets an edge out of the start gate and down the first section of the course.

So the Perisher grooming fleet has sculpted a series of jumps and turns identical to the Cypress Mountain course, focusing in particular on that critical opening section.

The work on the Perisher course has been supervised by Canadian John Balfour, who was the assistant designer for the Vancouver Games course.

Australia's Olympic team candidates in both events have spent the last week training on the course, which is located on the Outer Limits run off the Ridge Chair, but the opportunity has also lured the very strong Canadian National Snowboard Team to Australia to get in vital on-snow pre-Olympic training.

The Australian Team includes snowboard-cross rider Damon Hayler, a first-time World Cup winner earlier in the year and ski-cross racer Jenny Owens, who also made the podium in the 2008/09 season.

Olympic Winter Institute/AIS Head Snowboard Coach Ben Wordsworth is over the moon about the opportunity Perisher and it's on mountain staff has handed his athletes.

"We're getting great training here," Wordsworth said.

"Perisher has put in an amazing amount of effort and time to produce one of the most technical courses for our Olympic athletes that Australia has seen."

"We've been able to work on starts and becoming familiar with the woo-tang features that will be seen in most World Cup events in the lead up to the Games, and in Vancouver as well."

"Courses like this are hard to come by outside of competition, so we are extremely fortunate that our home resort has produced such a perfect training environment."

"And along with the course, Perisher is also hosting the Canadian national team and this has been a huge advantage for us in preparing our race tactics and working on speed with some of the top riders in the world."

"It's also a great lead-up to the opening event of the World Cup, which is in Argentina in September."