Discipline: Alpine and Ski Cross
Olympic Participation: Salt Lake City 2002, Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014
Medal awarded in: 2022

Jenny Lyons has had a long career in snow sports in both alpine skiing and ski-cross. 

Lyons started off as an alpine skier and as a junior she was a member of the Sport and Rec team based in Jindabyne. At 12 years of age she won a Sport and Rec scholarship to train and compete overseas, an experience which helped progress her development. 

Lyons ended up staying on the Australian National Alpine Team for 9 years, winning her first Australian title at 21 years of age and qualifying for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics off the back of her performance at the 2001 FIS Alpine Ski World Championships in St Anton, Austria, where she consistently placed close to the top-30 mark in all disciplines. 

The Olympic debut was a rollercoaster of emotions for Lyons, who will always remember vividly the excitement felt at the Opening Ceremony, when she walked into the stadium to loud cheering from the American home crowd. In Salt Lake City Lyons contested the Super G, Super Combined. Giant Slalom and Downhill. Her best result was a ninth place in the Super Combined, Australia’s second best Olympic Alpine result behind Zali Steggall’s bronze medal in Nagano in 1998.

After a brief retirement from ski racing, Lyons took up Ski-cross in 2006. Once organised as a professional sport, by then ski-cross had transitioned under the FIS umbrella with a World Cup circuit organised since 2002. Lyons made her ski-cross World Cup debut in Kreischberg (Austria) in January 2006 and scored the first of four career World Cup podiums two years later in Flaine (France). 

A few years later, ski-cross was approved for inclusion in the Olympic programme at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Lyons qualified for the Games and made her “second” Olympic debut, finishing 13th. 

Lyons' World Cup success continued after the Games. Despite having to mount a challenging comeback from a knee injury in 2011, Lyons won bronze at the World Cup event in Blue Mountain, Canada in the same year and went on to also win a bronze medal at the X Games in 2012.

Lyons’ third Olympic campaign, the second in ski-cross, stopped just short of a semifinal berth, enough to improve on her previous result and claim 12th overall in Sochi. 

Looking back on her career, Lyons identified her 5th place at the 2011 Freestyle World Championships in Deer valley, USA, as the highlight of her career - an event where she felt in a good mindset and performed at her best, despite missing out on podium placement.