“Miracles do happen … the best water jump ramp in the world is right here in Australia,” said Geoff Henke at the opening of the Brisbane facility named after him in 2021. That Australia’s winter athletes could have a state-of-the-art training venue on home soil was indeed miraculous, but it was more a testament to Geoff Henke’s perseverance than any divine intervention.

That trademark perseverance has seen astonishing growth in Australia’s participation and performance at the highest level in winter sports. In the early days of his time in sports administration, Australia sent a handful of athletes to the Winter Games for little return.

Most recently, at Beijing in 2022, Australia sent a team of 43 athletes who won four medals. In the northern season surrounding those Games, Australian athletes won 25 World Cup medals. One common thread in that transformation is the indefatigable Geoff Henke.

Geoff, the person John Coates describes as “Mr Winter Olympics”, long ago saw the virtue of world class facilities to help Australia’s athletes along the way. Off-snow training is mandatory for aerial skiers, and with the increased complexity of their aerial manoeuvres, for mogul skiers too.

Australia’s aerial and mogul skiers have produced nine of the nation’s 19 Winter Olympic medals. But there’s a labyrinth of lobbying and politics to navigate and negotiate. After she won gold at Salt Lake City in 2002, Geoff recruited Alisa Camplin to join him and meet with Prime Minister John Howard and his sport minister Rod Kemp to make the case for a water ramp. The pair got some funding; it was withdrawn on a change of government, but Geoff didn’t leave it alone – the funding was later reinstated.

Climate was a natural consideration to make the facility workable year-round (ramps in the northern hemisphere are typically near snow fields and close for winter) so Queensland was an obvious choice.

When that fell over, Penrith near Sydney was considered and a case was also made for Lennox Head, in northern NSW, but the locals weren’t happy. So, it was back to Brisbane and the Sleeman Sports Complex at Chandler.

It’s a win for the athletes, but the Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre is also a strategic win for the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia which Henke chairs.

“We’ll be able to negotiate training rights,” Alisa Camplin said. “There will be a mass of people wanting to come and jump there, not just because it’s one of the world’s best facilities, but it’s 12 months a year.”

The other side of that is that it gives Australian athletes bargaining strength as they seek to access winter training venues, particularly leading into major events.

There was a long road to reach these heights and Geoff Henke has been driving that road all the way.

The Olympic Challenge

Geoff was a keen and capable boxer and ice skater in his youth; it was on the rink in the late 1940s at the Melbourne Glaciarium that he first noticed a young figure skater, Gweneth Molony. He eventually asked her out, but she told him her father’s permission was required.

Ted Molony, her father, was also accomplished on ice, both as athlete and referee. In ice hockey, Ted’s decisions didn’t always go Geoff’s way, and the young Henke thought he’d be unlikely to get the green light to date the ref’s daughter. Fortunately, Molony didn’t object.

They married to become a formidable team in the fight for athletes – Geoff the agitator and Gweneth comfortable as the strength alongside.

She was an Australian champion in figure skating, selected for the 1952 Olympic Winter Games in Oslo. Gweneth travelled by ship for those Games, training in Europe before Oslo, then competing at the World Championships in Paris.

Geoff Henke went on to captain the Victorian ice hockey team. He had his eye on Olympic selection for Cortina d’Ampezzo, in 1956, but the marginalisation of Australian winter sports hit home on the cusp of those Winter Olympics.

“I can remember, to my disappointment, the Australian Olympic Federation let us down and wouldn’t nominate us for the Cortina Games,” Geoff said.

Edgar (later Sir Edgar) Tanner was the AOF secretary and later the president. He came from boxing and saw that as one of three sports for the Olympics. “He also recognised that swimming in Australia was an important sport, as was track and field,” Geoff said. “Apart from that, there was nothing.

“I always had Tanner in my mind about how bad it was not to be recognised. As I was getting older, I realised these young winter sports athletes deserved some help.”

By 1964, for the Innsbruck Olympic Winter Games, the team comprised just six alpine skiers. In that same year for the Tokyo Summer Games, Australia sent a team of 253 athletes.

Geoff Henke had some work to do.

The case for winter sports

In the 1960s, the ski industry in Australia was small but growing. Geoff became part of the ski lift business at Falls Creek which also ran the resort’s ski school, he was also active in the Falls Creek Race Club.

“That put me in a position, as a director of that company, to be able to help the racers,” he said. In the early days, that included Ross Milne and his younger brother Malcolm.

“I took a liking to those two boys and Sigi [Siegfried] Haberzettl, our chief instructor, he had a racing background from Austria, of course – he could see their raw potential. He could see the guts they had and how well they skied.”

Ross Milne tragically died in a skiing accident but his brother Malcolm went on to win a World Cup race at Val d’Isère in December 1969. He was the first person outside the European alpine nations to win a World Cup downhill. He kept on racing and was a certainty for the 1972 Sapporo Games.

Geoff Henke thought he’d also be attending, in a team management role, but again the Olympic gate was shut to him. Dick Watson, the secretary of the Australian National Ski Federation, was the Chef de Mission for the Sapporo team. He told Geoff he had got him appointed as his assistant, but it was conditional on another athlete being nominated.

“He had a couple in mind but it didn’t transpire; the AOF wouldn’t allow them, so I didn’t go, and Dick was very disappointed.”

As the ANSF secretary, Watson was responsible for alpine and cross-country skiing and the various disciplines within those sports. “Dick was pushing me to get more involved,” Geoff said.

In 1972, the ANSF became the Australian Ski Federation and around this time it also established separate divisions for alpine and cross-country skiing.

Geoff Henke became the ASF’s first alpine director, leading an administration that for the first time could focus specifically on supporting alpine athletes.

At the same time, he was increasing his involvement with the Australian Olympic Federation.

The ASF president was Peter Blaxland, who was also a delegate to the AOF and a champion for winter sports.

He told Geoff he was resigning from the AOF as a delegate from the ASF and he was his preferred replacement.

“So I became a delegate. I was very friendly with Julius Lockington [Judy] Patching. He was the secretary-general of the AOF, a very famous sports administrator.

“He took me under his wing. He used to call me ‘GH’ and he’d say ‘GH, I think Winter Games has something, and I want you to lead it and I’ll be backing you behind the scenes’.”

Geoff Henke put his stamp on the Australian Olympic team as Chef de Mission for Innsbruck in 1976 – the first of six Games where he served in that role.

The 1976 Montreal Summer Games a few months later were a disaster for Australia. Medal expectations were high but the return from Montreal was just one silver and four bronze medals. Within the gloom for summer sports, Geoff saw some sunshine for the winter athletes.

In response to the poor showing in Montreal, recognising that their athletes needed more support, which amounted to more money, the AOF established a marketing committee. Geoff was appointed to that committee and he was also secretary of the AOF Forward Planning Commission which allocated funds to the Olympic sports, giving him some real influence on behalf of winter sports.

Along with Judy Patching, another ally Geoff had was Tom Blue, or TC Blue as he was known, an uncompromising Queenslander who came from rugby union, but most importantly, was head of what was known then as the Selection or “Justification” committee.

“I was secretary of that committee to him as the chairman and I had a pretty good in with Tom.He would always listen to me and agreed that Winter Games should get a go, no more so than Summer, but they deserved a go and to be recognised,” Geoff said.

“So, at the same time I was alpine director of the ASF, I was naturally looking to get teams to go [and compete internationally] and get their standard up. The top ones were getting some funding, at World Cup level.

“That was the criteria, you had to be at that level and fortunately our athletes were good enough to make it at that standard.”

The team grew to 10 athletes for the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics and 11 in Sarajevo 1984. By Calgary in 1988 there were 19 competing in alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross country skiing, figure skating and speed skating.

The ski trip

Geoff Henke’s star continued to rise in sports administration. In 1977 he’d been made the Australian representative to the International Ski Federation (FIS) and he became ASF president in 1983, a position he held until 1989 when he became AOF vice-president – the first to be appointed for winter sports. He was also the first Australian to be elected to the FIS Council.

Prior to the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, the Australian Government had demanded a boycott as a protest against Russia’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. The Australian Olympic Federation went ahead and competed, but it was hardly unified in the decision.

After Moscow, Henke saw a chance to reunite the AOF, so he organised an executive board meeting in unfamiliar territory, at Falls Creek. Some hadn’t even seen snow.

“I had a very good camaraderie with all those guys,” Henke said, “we didn’t push it too hard and they enjoyed that particular weekend. Fortunately, there was lovely snow and some of the younger ones (they weren’t all that young!) we put on skis, Judy Patching went on skis … it was really remarkable.

“We had some of the [race squad] skiers showing them the different disciplines – slalom and giant slalom, and so forth. That helped the recognition of winter sports a lot.

“My wife was a competitor in Oslo in 1952 – the difference between the recognition in the AOF then and at that stage was amazing.”

Still, they needed resources.

Exposure is one thing required to help generate those resources. In August 1989, an estimated 300 million people tuned in to watch the Alpine World Cup events at Thredbo in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains.

Geoff was the organising committee chairman of the Thredbo World Cup and together with Thredbo’s managing director at the time, Wayne Kirkpatrick, lobbied FIS for Australia to hold the event. “Kirkpatrick was wary of me initially, but I understood the commercial side of it,” Geoff said.

“We had a budget; we became good friends and we went to Switzerland and met with FIS and showed them videos of Thredbo and what it was like at the time.”

It had a broader purpose than just the World Cup – the idea was to also host a training program for national and international athletes on world-class courses; something that happens now where up-and-comers mix with the world’s best mogul skiers each winter at Perisher.

Back at Thredbo, approval was eventually given to host slalom and giant slalom World Cup events on August 12 and 13 in 1989; the first for that season on the men’s circuit. The course preparation for the technical events was superb and the snow cover better than average. It was as though Thredbo had written the recipe – the weather cleared, the temperature dropped and the course froze race-hard.

For Kirkpatrick, the national and international media exposure underpinned the value of the event. “It was an opportunity to unveil Thredbo … it put a stamp of approval and quality on Thredbo.”

For Geoff Henke and Wayne Kirkpatrick there was also the satisfaction in running a successful event. As Kirkpatrick said, “I know for a fact that FIS and Hans Gruber, who was the man running the men’s alpine World Cup at the time, were very sincere when they said this was the ‘best run World Cup’ ever.”

The turning point

There was another Australian resort that would soon look to competitive snow sports to increase its profile and broaden its appeal and also run World Cup events.

Rino and Diana Grollo and their extended family were enthusiastic Mt Buller skiers. Their first commercial interest at the resort came with the purchase of the Abom Restaurant in 1987 – they would later buy the lift company and substantial property holdings.

Along the way, the Grollos came to know the winter athletes and understand their plight.

Downhill racers told Rino how they were forced to sleep in their cars as they travelled the Northern Hemisphere World Cup circuit.

“We had to do better than that,” Rino Grollo said. So he rang Geoff Henke. Geoff recalls that phone call, when Rino offered some funds for a coach. He told Rino the offer was generous, but it wouldn’t make much difference.

“Well, what would?” Rino asked.

Henke replied: “Rino, you have to put $1 million up, or forget it.”

“Oh”, Rino said “what would Mt Buller get for that?”

Geoff looked for the answer to that question. He talked it over with AOC Secretary General Craig McLatchey and it was decided that Mt Buller would be offered the rights to be an Olympic Training Centre.

“So, I got back to Rino and said that we’d be able to make Mt Buller the Olympic Training Centre, ‘but you’re not doing it!’

“And Rino said, ‘Geoff, I am going to do it’.”

That was 1994 and the Australian Ski Institute was born.

With its funding, the ASI could run serious programs for the athletes. The ASI, and by extension Mt Buller as its base, had the use of the Olympic rings. Mt Buller became a home resort for the athletes as well as the host of aerials World Cup events between 1997 and 2005.

Winter sports were on their way. The ASI had World Cup and World Championships campaigns to run, but its sights were firmly set on the 1998 Nagano Games.

Ian Chesterman was Chef de Mission for the first time at Nagano. There were high hopes for Australia’s aerial skiers but they failed to deliver.

“There was a fairly dark mood around the team,” he said. “When it came time for Zali Steggall to ski, the Australians were looking down the barrel.”

Geoff Henke was at the course with AOC President John Coates for the Olympic slalom finals. “It was a lovely sunny winter’s day,” Henke said. “It was the type of day where you just fall in love with winter sports.

“And John said ‘wouldn’t it be good if Zali Steggall got a good result?’

“And I said ‘John, she can get a good result alright, she’s done very well in World Cup … there’s a medal prospect there’.”

After her first run, Steggall was coming third. Geoff took Coates to meet her, before her second and final run. They watched the second run with high anticipation and Steggall won bronze. Australia’s first, and to date only, Olympic medal in alpine skiing.

Henke, McLatchey and others had seen the potential to take the ASI further and deeper, to embrace not just skiing, but all the winter sports where Australia could compete in the top 15 in the world.

“John Coates and Craig McLatchey were on the organising committee for the Sydney 2000 Olympics,” Geoff said, “and we always used to say to John ‘why don’t we form an Olympic Winter Institute and it can take over from the Ski Institute?’

“And John would say ‘no, we’ll wait, with Sydney 2000 coming up, the money is budgeted for the summer sports and for their forward programs’.

“And Craig would say, ‘but John, they’ve got as much money as they can spend’.”

The OWIA is born

Buoyed by Zali Steggall’s success, Coates suggested he and Henke and McLatchey go and find a cafe. Geoff recalls it like this: “So we go and have a coffee and he said, ‘I’ve been thinking boys, I’ve been thinking …’ and McLatchey kicked me on the shins, we knew what was coming, ‘we should form an Olympic Winter Institute’ and we said ‘John, that’s a great idea, that’s a fantastic idea.’

“He’s no fool of course, he saw us laughing and he said ‘you pack of bastards!’”

Coates got the Australian Institute of Sport on board; the next step was to get the concept of the expanded institute agreed to by the AOC.

The ASI was about half a million dollars in deficit – they had spent forward to run their programs and achieve the medal in 1998. In Geoff’s words, the AOC board was very conservative. There was an AOC meeting scheduled for Brisbane and Coates left it to Henke to handle the issue of the OWIA.

“Fortunately, I had a good mate, Sir Donald Trescowthick who I’d recommended for the board because of his corporate knowledge and background.”

Geoff assured the board that within two years the money would be repaid and Trescowthick backed him.

“Sir Donald said, ‘I’ve been looking at these figures and I have every confidence in Geoff Henke. I think you’d be wrong to miss this opportunity. It’ll enhance the whole Olympic movement and broaden it and I think it’s where we should be going; winter and summer, it’s good for our marketing and it’s good for our movement. I would endorse this,’ Sir Donald said. And we got it
through.”

The Australian Institute of Winter Sports was born, absorbing the ASI and renamed as the Olympic Winter Institute after the Sydney Games.

Before Zali Steggall’s 1998 Nagano medal, and the establishment of the OWIA, there had been one Australian team (the short track relay speed skaters) and nine individuals on a World Cup, World Championships or Olympic podium in the 64 years since the first Winter Olympics in 1924.

In just the first four years of the OWIA, that number almost doubled, as Australia found the funds and developed the structure to continue to support alpine skiing athletes, to exploit the country’s success in aerials and its promise in moguls and to explore new sports like halfpipe, slopestyle and ski and snowboard cross.

The first Games under the OWIA were a stunning success with Steven Bradbury (skating) and Alisa Camplin (aerials) both winning gold. Australian athletes have medalled at every Games since.

Geoff Henke has been the chair since the OWIA’s inception – in those years the OWIA has helped more than 50 athletes climb those podiums. Most recently, in Beijing, with a 43-strong team of athletes – more women than men among them – that saw gold for Jakara Anthony (moguls), silver for Scotty James (halfpipe) and Jackie Narracott (skeleton) and bronze for Tess Coady (slopestyle).

The OWIA’s focus remains very much on the athlete, supported with world-leading programs in sports science, medicine and psychology. First class infrastructure is also paramount. Like the Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre in Brisbane and the Icehouse in Melbourne. Geoff’s push for the Icehouse, with its two skating rinks, started long before the OWIA wrapped its arms around winter sports; he had lobbied five different Victorian Premiers to get the Icehouse built.

“The criteria,” he said, “was that we had to have two Olympic-size rinks, people couldn’t believe that but there’s two needs – one is general skating and the other is sport. You’re really renting out ice and general skating makes it pay.”

In the feasibility studies, they calculated they needed 320,000 people through the gate each year to make it pay. “I thought that was ambitious, but I thought we could do it,” he said. Before long 500,000 people were coming through the gate each year.

The facility, named the O’Brien Icehouse for the catering and leisure business that manages it, opened in 2010 with space for the OWIA’s administrative base, two Olympic-sized ice-skating rinks and stadium seating for 1000.

For his service to sport, Geoff Henke was made an AOC Life Member in 1992 and received an IOC Olympic Order in 1998. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1987 and an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1999. In 1993 he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, was an Australian Sports Medal recipient in 2000 and a Centenary Medal recipient in 2001. In 2008, he became the first Australian to be made a lifetime member of the International Ski Federation.

Walking the dog

Joanne Henke, herself an Olympian (alpine skiing, Innsbruck 1976), grew up surrounded by snow, making her way to Falls Creek with her parents Geoff and Gweneth every winter weekend in the back of the Studebaker Lark, then joining them on their business trips to Europe and North America.

At one point, the Molony’s business started by Gweneth’s forebears was expanded to have retail and ski hire outlets in Melbourne, Mt Buller, Falls Creek, Mt Hotham and Dinner Plain.

That Dinner Plain ever moved beyond high country grazing was due in a large part to the tenacity of Henke – the duo of Henke and architect Peter McIntyre were the driving force behind what became Dinner Plain village in the Victorian Alps. “The vision they had was amazing,” Joanne says.

George Aivatoglou worked for Geoff Henke at Molony’s Mt Buller from the outset. That lasted 27 years, until George bought the business.

“When we started he [Henke] said ‘George, if I sell it, I’ll sell it to you.’ We didn’t write a contract, we shook hands and that was that. I was happy, he was happy and that was a deal. Geoff Henke is a gentleman.”

Henke’s daughter Joanne and her partner Doug McDougall bought the remaining Molony’s businesses from her parents and still run a retail outlet in Melbourne. The name lives on. Has the daughter come across anyone with perseverance to match her father?

“No, he will not give in. The rinks are fantastic and the Brisbane water ramps are fantastic too. Brisbane is a triumph – for our athletes and those of other nations as well.”

Geoff Henke remains active, despite his 95 years. He’ll often be out taking calls while walking Sigi, the west highland terrier – named after Sigi Haberzettl, the family friend and Austrian ski instructor from the Henkes’ Falls Creek days.

“He keeps pretty active,” Joanne says. “He stopped swimming when he was about 90, but he used to go down to MSAC and Mack Horton [the Olympic gold medallist] would be there training.

“Dad would have his goggles on his head and his fins on and be poised up there on those huge start blocks but chatting away to Mack Horton and his coach, fins hanging over the edge. It was so funny.”

Forever interested in the athlete.