Aussie medals kick-start Para-Alpine and Para-Snowboard season

The 2016/17 Northern Winter season for Para- Alpine Skiing and Para-Snowboard has kicked off in Landgraaf, the Netherlands with a number of medals and career-best performances.

The event got underway with two alpine IPC slalom races, highlighted for Australia by a number of podium performances.

After taking most of the last season off to focus on her university studies, Melissa Perrine made a successful return to international competition with her guide Andy Bor.

In the first two IPC races, Perrine and Bor picked up two silver medals in the visually impaired category before going one better in the first Europa Cup race taking gold.

“I am pretty content with where Mel and Andrew are at this point,” Head Coach Christian Geiger said.

“With Mel taking a shorter season last season, it gave us the time to change and work on a few things in her skiing without the pressures of competition to rush things along. She has been working really hard in the gym, which has helped her athletically. She still has some ways to go but she is well on her way.”

Victoria Pendergast was also in action in the women’s sitting category, finishing just off the podium in both an IPC and Europa Cup race finishing fourth.

In the men’s slalom races, Shaun Pianta and his guide Jeremy O’Sullivan showed their rise to form with two bronze medals in the visually impaired slalom Europa Cup races.

“Shaun and Jeremy are tracking along really well,” Geiger said. “They work really hard and its great to see them getting some reward for their efforts. They are both now qualified to race World Cup Slalom.”

Other positive results came from Patrick Jensen and his guide Lara Falk who were fifth in the two Europa Cup races and from Jonty O’Callaghan who posted four top-10 results across all the races in a deep field in the men’s standing slalom.

“I am really impressed with the team's performance over the races,” Geiger said.

“All the athletes have come in with very little skiing this International season, having only arrived four days prior to the races. It was fantastic to see nearly all our athletes either score career best results and/or qualify for World Cup racing.”

The Para-Alpine athletes will now be based in Pitzal, Austria for the next three weeks preparing for the next World Cups in December.

Landgraaf also featured a Para-Snowboard Europa Cup race and two World Cup races with more success for Aussie athletes and promising signs for the rest of the season to come.

Joany Badenhorst picked up three bronze medals from three races and in the men’s events, Simon Patmore was the best performing Australian with two top-five results in the World Cup races as well as sixth in the Europa Cup.

“Joany showed great consistency and was able to improve her race time each run,” Head Coach Lukas Prem said.

“Her category has also got more competitive and it was great to see that she claimed three podiums in a row. Simon has made great progress, especially in Banked Slalom where we still had some work to do after last season. His goal was top five in World Cup and he got there in both races.

“Our new athletes Sean and Alex are a very exciting addition to the team. They both had tremendous progress in the training week leading up to Landgraaf but even more impressive was their race performance. In their first ever snowboard competitions they managed to qualify for World Cup, placing in the mid of the field of close to 30 competitors. Both managed to further improve and grab a top 15 spot in each of the World Cups, hard to do in such a competitive class as upper limb.”

The Para-Snowboard athletes now head to Finland for a training camp focused on Boardercross where they will be joined by young athlete Ben Tudhope. Finland will see the athletes training with leading Finnish Para-snowboarders Matti Suur-Hamari and Bibian Mentel with the focus on their first boardercross competition in January and ultimately the World Championships in Big White in February.