Ronald's Story
The team arrived with just a couple of days before competition, with no time to acclimatise to the Valley which was 1500m above sea level. The rarefied air, fast ice and the fact that all players were amateurs in the true sense of the word, meant that they had a difficult tournament ahead. The team played six games and lost all of them - scoring 10 goals but conceding 87. They placed ninth.
Ron Amess was part of the Australian team who competed in Olympic Ice Hockey for the first time at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games in the USA.
Amess was a forward who was also in the first Australian Team to compete in the Ice Hockey World Championships and he played defense in second World Championship team (1961/62) which recorded Australia's historic first ever International win.
The Olympics were a David and Goliath battle for the Aussie team, who were actually at their peak in 1956 but a shortfall in funds meant that they had to wait until 1960 for an invitation and financial help from the Americans to get there.
The Australian team mainly comprised tradesmen who had gravitated to suburban ice rinks in search of entertainment after World War II. All the players except Sydneysider Rob Dewhurst were from Victoria, and they competed in one of Australia's few ice-hockey leagues - practicing for an hour a week at the St Moritz rink in St Kilda.
The team arrived with just a couple of days before competition, with no time to acclimatise to the Valley which was 1500m above sea level. The rarefied air, fast ice and the fact that all players were amateurs in the true sense of the word, meant that they had a difficult tournament ahead.
