More than 30 Australian winter sports athletes will be competing in Vancouver Olympic test events over the next 12 days, 12 months out from the 2010 Winter Games.

Aerial skiing world number one Lydia Lassila will head the contingent of Olympic aspirants which will also include five time World Cup champion Jacqui Cooper and four other athletes who have stepped onto the podium this season.

As well as providing invaluable experience of the Olympic venues, the events are important components of the qualification process for the Games.

Lydia Lassila has won twice this season, made the podium on another occasion, and she also collected silver on the Cypress Mountain course last year.

AIS team-mate Cooper took the gold medal in that 2008 event, and showed signs this past weekend in Deer Valley that she is getting back to form following her accident in China in December.

The pair will jump alongside Liz Gardner, Bree Munro, Denita Mudge, and the first Australian man to compete in an aerial skiing World Cup for 11 years, Melbourne 24-year-old David Morris.

Sadly, Torino 2006 gold medallist Dale Begg-Smith will be forced to miss the event after injuring his knee in a World Cup mogul skiing event in Deer Valley, Utah, on Saturday.

In his absence, the Australian mogul skiing representation in the Cypress Mountain bumps will be provided by Jindabyne skier Ramone Cooper.

The third freestyle discipline, ski cross, makes its debut at Vancouver 2010, and Australia’s leading exponent in the sport, Jenny Owens, has skied to a silver medal and another fourth placing in the four events contested so far this season.

Ski and Snowboard Australia athletes Katya Crema and Scott Kneller will also compete. In the second week of February, snowboard cross rider Damon Hayler will be attempting to repeat the performance that took him to gold in Bad Gastein, Austria, last month. He will be joined by Alex Pullin, a first-time medallist last season.

SSA athletes Taan Robrahn, Phillip Maclarn and Nick Warren will also be competing in the head-to-head discipline.

In snowboard halfpipe, Holly Crawford, the silver medallist at the 2009 World Snowboard Championships last month, will compete alongside X Games winner Torah Bright.

Debut bronze medallist Nathan Johnstone and Hannah Trigger will also get their first taste of the 2012 halfpipe in Cypress Mountain, along with SSA rider and Torino Olympian Ben Mates.

And in the third snowboard event on the Olympic program, parallel giant slalom, world number nine Joh Shaw will be in action.

Off the snow and onto the ice, skeleton athletes Emma Lincoln-Smith, Michelle Steele and Teniele Richards will take their first competition runs down the Whistler Sliding Centre.

Lincoln-Smith and Steele have both posted top ten results this season.

Finally, Australia’s brightest young figure skating prospect, Cheltzie Lee, will skate in the Four Continents Figure Skating Championship at the 2010 Games ice sports venue, the Pacific Coliseum in the city of Vancouver.

National men’s champion Nicholas Fernandez, national ladies champion Tina Wang, and Australian ice dancing titleholders Danielle O'Brien and Greg Merriman will also be among the 11 Australian skaters taking part in the event.

Barry White
OWI