The National Snowsport Championships, the zenith of the Australian season, promises to be the most fiercely contested domestic series in four years when it bursts into action from August 12.

With just six months to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, locally grown athletes from five ski and snowboard disciplines will use the series as a launching pad for their Olympic aspirations and to gauge their preparation against the many high-class Australian and overseas competitors expected to enter each event.

Staged at all five major ski and snowboard resorts throughout Australia, the revised six-stage series will open with the Alpine National Championships at NSW’s Thredbo from August 12 to 16 before moving about 15 kilometres along the Snowy Mountains to the Perisher resort for the National Mogul Championships, on August 16 and 17, part of the prestigious Australia/NZ Cup (ANC).

Victoria’s Mt Hotham hosts the National Ski Cross Championships, also part of the ANC, on August 17 and 18.

The series’ fourth stop will be staged a short distance across the Bogong high country at Falls Creek on August 24 with the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest Cross Country skiing event, the Kangaroo Hoppet.

On August 26 and 27, the action returns to Mt Hotham for the Snowboard Cross Festival.

Mt Buller’s highly-rated ABOM Mogul Challenge on August 31 has been added as the final event in the series for the first time this year.

At the Alpine National Championships, a number of Australia’s top athletes will use the events to help win selection for Sochi.

The 2010 National Slalom Champion Lavinia Chrystal has the potential to gain more than any other alpine athlete competing in the series. Before she can realise her Olympic dream, Chrystal knows she has to perform strongly in the slalom and giant slalom events at Thredbo.

However, Chrystal knows too well that 17-year-old Greta Small will be hard to beat. Small has won seven of her last eight starts in Australia and has won the national slalom and giant slalom titles the last two years.

In the men’s draw, Mike Rishworth, Ross Peraudo, Luke Laidlaw, Sam Robertson, Luc Chevalier and Dominic Demschar are all vying for a place in the Sochi bound Australian team.

Australia’s AIS moguls scholarship holders – Britt Cox, Nicole Parks, Matt Graham, Sam Hall and Brodie Summers – will all compete in Perisher and use the opportunity to measure their preparation for Sochi against a powerful international field.

Arguably the highest quality field in the series, the National Moguls Championships has attracted entries from nine overseas countries, including three of the top 10 in the men’s rankings.

American and world number three Patrick Deneen, Japan’s Endo Sho, ranked fifth and Russian Alexandr Smyshlyaev, ranked ninth, are expected to use the event as a kick-start to the coming World Cup season and their Sochi campaigns.

Japan has entered two of their top women in fifth ranked Miki Ito and Arisa Murata, ranked 12th in the world, while China’s leading moguls athlete, Ning Qin is also expected to chase a podium placing.

Ski cross AIS scholarship holders Scott Kneller, Anton Grimus, Katya Crema, Sami Kennedy-Sim and Jenny Owens are each expected to race at Mt Hotham against a full field of other Aussies and internationals over two days as part of their preparation for their northern hemisphere season which starts in Canada in December.

Russian cross country skiers Alexander Legkov and Ilya Chernousov, ranked second and sixth in the world, will headline the huge field entered in the Kangaroo Hoppet, the largest single snow sport event in the Southern Hemisphere.

Athletes will contest the gruelling 42-kilometre event, the blue ribbon race on the Hoppet program, around the Falls Creek area and out into Bogong High Plains region.

Race organisers and the huge crowd who watched an enthralling finish last year with Legkov lunging on the line to record a photo finish victory ahead of Chernousov, are hoping for an equally exciting event on August 24.

The Kangaroo Hoppet is the first event in the 15-race international Hoppet series that attracts 125,000 athletes from 15 nations and four continents.

Australians looking to gain selection in the Olympic cross country team are Callum Watson, Phillip Bellingham, Esther Bottomley, Aimee Watson, Mark van der Ploeg, Paul Kovacs and Anna Trnka with all expected to compete on August 24.

The Snowboard Cross Festival will consist of the National Championships and SSA Futures Talent Identification Sessions.

While most eyes will be on World Champion Alex Pullin and how his preparation for Sochi is progressing, NSW Institute of Sport riders Cam Bolton, Belle Brockhoff and Daniel Morrissy are expected to start their competition year in full flight.

Graham and Cox will return to Mt Buller’s ABOM Moguls event determined to continue their winning ways of the last few years.

The 18-year-old Graham is looking to win a record equalling fifth consecutive ABOM moguls title while Cox, also 18, is chasing her fourth win at the classic event.

The key Qualifying Events for Australia athletes chasing Sochi selection are listed here>>>

Peter Henrys