FREESTYLE – MOGULS: Australia’s most successful winter Olympian Dale Begg-Smith officially kicked off his Sochi campaign with a trademark low intensity training session on Tuesday.

After missing the first two nights of training, the Olympic gold and silver medallist skied the first session at the Extreme Park complex before deciding to miss the second session to ensure that he remains injury free.

During a media conference earlier in the day, the 29-year-old officially announced what many predicted - Sochi will bring to a close his illustrious career that includes three Olympic Winter Games and 74 World Cup starts dating back to 2001.

At the end of each run tonight, while on his way to the chairlift to go back up the hill, the popular Australian was regularly encouraged by well-wishers from within the mogul skiing community, many of whom he has not seen since he stepped out of international competition in 2010.

Australian Institute of Sport Mogul Skiing Program Head Coach Steve Desovich said that Begg-Smith has always taken a different approach to the rest of the field in early training days of any event he has contested.

Instead of skiing top-to-bottom at competition speed, he uses training sessions to read the course and plan strategies and refine techniques required to exact the maximum efficiency from his competition performances.

Other Australians training were Matt Graham, Brodie Summers, Sam Hall, Nicole Parks and Taylah O’Neill. Britt Cox was rested.Parks landed heavily on a jump during her training session, a fairly spectacular crash ensuing.

The 21-year-old said the crash looked worse than it was, escaping with just a pair of broken glasses.Desovich said he was pleased with each of his athletes in the third training session in the lead up to the women’s final on February 8 and men’s final on February 10.

“We have a few things to work on but basically it was a good session,” Desovich said.