Paul Gray was eight years old when his family moved from Melbourne to Mt Beauty. His father had taken a job as an engineer with the hydroelectric scheme and Paul’s parents thought Mt Beauty would be a great place to raise their three boys. What they probably didn’t anticipate was that, just over a decade later, all three of them would be overseas at the same time, trying out for the 1992 Olympics.

Paul L’Huillier was a key figure in the development of Paul Gray. A PE teacher at Paul’s school, L’Huillier started training Paul’s older brother Mark and eventually became Paul’s own coach when he was 14. The two kept working together for years and Gray still remembers fondly the times his coach would knock on his bedroom window early on a Saturday morning to go running. L’Huillier was a strong believer in Gray’s potential and volunteered huge amounts of time writing training programs and supporting his athlete’s development. He followed Paul Gray to the Olympics and was his coach when the skier made his Olympic debut at the Albertville Winter Games in 1992.

After the Games, Gray decided to take up biathlon. Despite meeting the qualifying criteria for the 1994 Olympic Games, he was not selected to the Australian team after Sandra Paintin-Paul achieved a better result in the last qualifying World Cup and took the last available spot. Gray not only missed out on his second Olympic participation, but also on the opportunity to join his brother Mark in Lillehammer, where the older sibiling competed in cross-country skiing. 

In 1997 Paul decided to switch from biathlon back to cross-country skiing. After participating in the Nordic Skiing World Championships in Throndheim (NOR), he became the first Australian to win the Kangaroo Hoppet, the long-distance cross-country race, part of the Worldloppet circuit. From there he went on to make the Olympic team again and compete at his second Winter Games.

Once retired from ski racing Paul Gray eventually returned to Mt Beauty, twenty years after he left, with his own young family.  His two daughers are now teenagers and have both inherited his love for the snow.