"I was made for mountains and snow" -  so begins Bob Arnott's book “Seventy-five  seasons”, narrating the history of the Ski Club of Australia.

Born in Sydney on 13 October 1922, Bob started skiing at the age of 12, during a school excursion to the Kosciuszko Hotel (now known as Sponars Chalet, in Perisher Valley, NSW). Although it was an epic journey at that time, with a 16-hour road trip from Sydney to the snow, he immediately developed a lifelong love of the mountains. He skied at Charlotte's Pass each winter after that first trip, learning the Arlberg technique from the visiting Austrian instructors (such as Ernst Skardarasy) and making the most out of his ski equipment, which at the time involved fitting leather boots to wooden skis by hammering the metal toe irons shut.

By the late ‘40s, Bob had established himself as one of the top Australian racers of his day, representing Australia many times in the InterDominion Championships, a competition held in New Zealand and Australia. He then started training in Europe with local teams, focused on representing Australia at the 1952 Winter Olympics. In Oslo, Arnott competed in the Downhill, Giant Slalom and Slalom events, finishing 71st, 66th and 78th respectively.

The Olympic Downhill was one of Arnott's favorite memories of those Games, run on very little snow. “I started off behind the Greek, there were probably one-minute intervals or something like that," recounted Arnott. The Greek was two-times Olympian Alexandros Vouxinos, who had left the Men's Downhill start hut just before Arnott, wearing bib no. 87.

 "The start of the race was fairly straightforward: The Greek disappeared, and I was sent off, and we came to a traverse, it was fairly steep, and the Greek had fallen down the hill, and so I passed him. Then the same thing happened to me, I fell down the hill and he passed me, and then I got up and managed to pass him again with a schuss to the finishing line”. Arnott eventually crossed the line almost two minutes ahead of Vouxinos. After the Olympics, he went on to become Australia’s national slalom champion in 1953.
 
During his European training camps leading up to the Oslo Olympics Arnott had also been charged with researching a training base for the Australian Olympic team. In those years he met many influential people in the ski community, who would become colleagues and friends for life. His involvement in the development of skiing culminated with his appointment as the first Australian member of the International Ski Federation (FIS), the sport's international governing body, in 1963.

 Arnott's involvement with the International Ski Federation lasted for 27 years, initially working on the Downhill/Slalom Committee and later on the Classification Committee, of which he remained an honorary member for the rest of his life. Together with United States FIS delegate Bob Beattie, Arnott developed a system for ranking international competitors and streamline the process of assigning start list positions. Their system was introduced in 1967, ahead of the 1968 Grenoble Winter Olympics.  While it has had some modifications since, it is still the basis of the FIS points system used for ranking skiers around the world today. It is affectionately referred to as the “2-Bob Rule” or just the “Bob Rule”. For many years Bob served also on the Ski Council of NSW and its successor, the NSW Ski Association.

 Unsurprisingly, Arnott's family is a skiing family, too. Arnott met his future wife at the 1963 Ski Club of Australia Race Week in Thredbo, where Simone Pirenne had just won the ladies’ slalom. The two got married in 1965 and had two children, Adrienne and Axel, who both represented Australia in Alpine racing.

 In his late years, Arnott enjoyed leading the Ski Club of Australia’s Thredbo Interclub Team and Masters races. The last time he competed in the Thredbo Masters was in 2010, finishing 6th in the Men's 75-and-over category, at the age of 88. His last day on skis, about 6 weeks before his 90th birthday, was a special family ski-race against his 8-year-old granddaughter.  He was so proud to be able to pass the ski racing baton on to a new generation.