The risk of a rapidly diminishing snow season is such that Austrian alpine skier Julian Schütter wrote an open letter to the FIS in February on behalf of more than 200 athletes as part of his role as an ambassador for the non-profit organisation Protect Our Winters. 'Certainly, there have been years where we have been there and we haven't had quite enough snow to get going,' Peel said. It's an issue that the athletes are not blind to.Īustralian freestyle skiers have their pre-season on-snow camps in Ruka in Finland, just south of the Arctic Circle, but even at that high latitude, early winter snow is not always a given. Brisbane 'the perfect place' for aerials trainingĪt the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the competition was run almost entirely on artificial snow, using hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of water to do so - although that was not due to high temperatures in Zhangjiakou, but a lack of natural precipitation in an area plagued by drought. Now, for the first time, the $6.5 million facility in Brisbane's south-east will host international competition, when the FIS Freestyle Summer Grand Prix season finale slides into town, down the 37-metre-high ramp. The Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre, opened in 2021, is where Australia's three-time Winter Olympians and 2022/23 World Cup one-two finishers Danielle Scott and Laura Peel train in their off-seasons. It is perhaps a surprise to some, but Brisbane is something of a hub for world-class aerials skiing - albeit one where heavy jackets and gloves are left firmly in the kit bag, replaced by thongs and swimsuits.

Yet incredibly, incongruously, this sub-tropical south-east Queensland paradise is the setting for the latest stop on the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) Freestyle World Tour. The unmistakable splash of swimming pool users echoes around.īrisbane is not the first place you'd think of when you think of skiing - at least not of the snow variety. The sun beats down from a cobalt blue sky.

It's 24 degrees Celsius on another stunning September Brisbane morning.

Gold rush white water season 5