A group of kids who spent their winters negotiating the trails, slopes and pipes of the NSW alpine regions. Talented and fearless youngsters who, even before they hit their teenage years, spent their summers touring the best northern hemisphere ski destinations in the world.

To most, their life seemed carefree, fearless and enviable, but their intent was far from that.

These six friends, all graduates of Cooma and Berridale Primary Schools, harboured an aspiration to represent their county in their chosen winter sport. To take on the world’s best on snow, despite hailing from the sunburnt country.

And they achieved that.

One achieved a gold medal, Torah Bright (2010), but according to cross-country star Ben, they all had their own “medal-like moments” on the world stage.

In giving a rare insight into his life as an athlete-turned husband, Ben spotlights the community that underpins our Winter Olympians.

“We had a pretty cool Rat Pack,” Ben said, looking back on the early years that led him to represent Australia at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic alongside his four school friends.

“We all grew up together and had so much fun together. We skied as much as we could and started traveling as very young kids.

“All of us had been overseas by the time we're 14 years old, which is rare when it's not a family holiday. It was special.

“I wouldn't say that we're super privileged or anything. It wasn’t like we were going and staying in massive hotels. We were living in very small apartments.

“But it was pretty cool for a small country town to have a lot of kids going and chasing their dreams.”

And those dreams began in the Aussie Alps.

As the youngest of three children to school teachers Shelia and John, Ben remembers the influence his parents had on shaping his connection with the mountains, local community, and the sport of skiing.

As a child, summers were spent on the NSW South Coast beach camping with older sisters Melanie and Claire; winters were spent on the trails around Perisher Valley.

“We had an amazing life,” Ben said.

“Every school holiday we were either at the beach or in the snow.

“It wasn't resort skiing, it was backcountry skiing. We would go on all-day tours. They'd take us out onto the main range for hours.

“I just assumed that was normal for kids, but you grow up and you find out that it’s not. I feel so lucky now.”

You could hear the joy in Ben’s voice as he remembers what seems like a storybook childhood. It fades for a moment when he shares, he lost his mum Shelia to cancer in 2006, and explains the whirlwind of emotions that came with the grief.

“She’s always in our thoughts,” Ben said, the impact heightened by the fact he is a parent now himself.

“No one ever wants to lose part of your family. Very sadly cancer got the better of her. It happened quickly.

“I was overseas to qualify for the Torino Olympics. I was on the cusp but wasn't really thinking about that too much. I just got on a plane and flew home. Mum passed away quite quickly after that.”

Rewind to his rise from weekend skier to ski racer and it all comes down to a sliding doors moment, when he was age 13.

The catalyst came in the form of renowned, and now much-celebrated former Russian coach, Nick Almoukov.

Nick was the head coach of the Paralympic Russian team for the Albertville and Lillehammer Games. He came to Australia to work as a ski guide for vision impaired athletes with the Paralympic team, but the role never eventuated.

Instead, what came was an opportunity that rocketed Ben on to the world cross country stage.

“I might not have been as competitive in skiing if Nick didn't move to Australia,” Ben said.

“I remember meeting for the first time; our training session was done by hand signals.

“As kids we were like, ‘Wow, this is amazing’.  We've got this Russian coach who we'd never seen before, and he was a good athlete himself.

“Nick became more than just a coach; he was a father figure. He took me into his family. I lived with them most of the Australian winter because we'd ski most days, and then we started travelling overseas when I was about 14.

“My results were getting better and better. I really enjoyed skiing and training with him.”

But it wasn’t just in the coaching.

Ben proved himself built for Cross-Country Skiing with a capacity for endurance matched by few Australian athletes.

At 17, he became the Australian Institute of Sport's best performer in the treadmill test of fitness and endurance.

Ben was able to last 34 minutes and 30 seconds on the test that starts slowly but gets so fast cushions surround the machine to protect athletes if they fall to the floor exhausted.

In the Vo2 max test, which shows maximum levels of oxygen in the blood that can be used by working tissues, Ben scored highly, ranking himself just behind Tour de France champion Cadel Evans and five-time Olympic cycling medallist Bradley McGee.

“It’s my biggest claim to fame,” Ben said with a laugh.

“I think it was on the front page of the newspaper which was funny.

“I'm blessed with quite a big heart and a good set of lungs. In cross country you push yourself as hard as you can, and at the time you hate it, but then once you finish, you're like, ‘I want to do that again’. It's quite rewarding.”

After finishing school, Ben hit the World Cup circuit and Russia became his northern hemisphere home, as Nick set up a base in the remote Siberian town of Soloboevo at the foot of the Ural Mountains.

The town, where Nick, his wife Irina and sons Kostya and Alexei hail from, is more than 2000km east of Moscow and about 80km from the nearest city Tyumen.

The town’s astounding remoteness is matched by lack of infrastructure and technology.

At the time cars were a rarity with people moving about in horse and cart. There is no plumbing to the houses, running water and in the winter, the temperature is regularly in the minus 30s.

But what Soloboevo allowed the athletes to do was begin training earlier than most in Europe starting in October and be a three-hour flight away from the major competition venues on the World Cup circuit.

“If you lived in an Australian city or even town and moved to the very tiny village in Siberia it would be a bit full on,” Ben said.

“There was no running water. We had to get water out of a well with a bucket.

“You’d use an outdoor toilet, there were no showers. There was electricity, which was nice.

“We had one of the, maybe, four or five cars in the town, but others literally were on horse and cart. It wasn't unusual for people who lived in the town never to have ventured more than 10km out of town in their life.

“I don't ever remember being overwhelmed. I'm a pretty simple person. But it does give you a bit of appreciation of your life when you do come home, and you do have things like running water and an inside toilet.”

For Ben, whose Olympic dream was sparked watching titans of the track Donovan Bailey and Ato Boldon run the 100m in Atlanta 1996, his Games moment came in Vancouver 2010.

And while he didn’t win a medal, he describes competing in his first event, the 15km, and finishing 45th overall, as being his “perfect race."

“I had really fast skis, which is super important for ski racing,” he said. 

“I could push as hard as I could, recover on the downhills and then race up the next hill.

“I was proud of that race; it was my first Olympic event and I was very nervous.

“My clearest memory is going up the last hill before you drop down into the stadium. The noise and cheering was unbelievably loud, but I could still hear my dad cheering out of thousands of voices.

“I was full of adrenaline…all I wanted to do was push harder and harder. I felt the pulse in my head, trying to get any bit of oxygen into my body at the same time.

“I don't really remember going down the finish straight because I blacked out. I very rarely fell over at the finish line from exhaustion, but I did because I've seen photos of it.”

These moments seem a world away now from the sleepy Snowy Mountains’ town of Berridale, where Ben lives with his wife, three-time Olympic freestyle skier and 2022 Australian flag bearer, Sami Kennedy-Sim, and their two children Olive (2) and newborn son Sonny.

Days on skis have become days behind the keyboard as he works for former teammate and friend, dual Olympic alpine skier, Jono Brauer in an ecommerce business selling mountain bike gear locally and internationally.

Weekends are spent with the family in the mountains; doting grandparents - his dad and much-loved second-wife Sonia and Sami’s parents Jenny and Nick, along with his sisters and their families.

Asked if daughter Olive is destined to follow in the footsteps of her highly-decorated parents and their love of winter sports, he said cheekily, she might not have a choice.

“Olive’s a bit too small for skis, but I did take her skiing recently, I put her in the backpack and went out for a backcountry ski, which was super cool. We took the toboggan; she slid down on it.

“I'm not sure if she loves the snow yet but she also probably won't get to have a say in it. Both Sami and I ski and spend our lives in winter in the snow.

“We don't want to stop doing that. I'm not going to push her into a sport, but it's like, can we go Cross-Country Skiing or Snowboarding or Alpine Skiing?”

And with those words, perhaps the next generation of the Monaro Rat Pack is imagined.

Catriona Dixon