Brockhoff, Walpole and Nerdal announced as recipients of the Snow Australia Medal on International Olympic Day
Published Tue 23 Jun 2020
As part of the celebrations for International Olympic Day, Snow Australia recognises Peter Brockhoff (Alpine), Hal Nerdal (Nordic Combined) and Richard Walpole (Cross-Country) as recipients of the Snow Australia Medal. Brockhoff, Nerdal and Walpole took part in the 1960 Olympic Winter Games at Squaw Valley, USA.
Australia sent a total of 31 athletes to that edition of the Games. The contingent was the largest to date, and was not matched until the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics. Snow Australia medal recipients Christine Davy and Bill Day, at their second and third Winter Olympic appearances respectively, rounded up the 1960 Alpine team.
Davy made history at Squaw Valley by becoming the first Australian skier to break into the top 30 in an Olympic event. She was able to achieve the feat twice, first by finishing 27th in the women's Downhill and then doubling up with a 29th place in the Slalom. Teammate Peter Brockhoff followed her lead and managed to score a 30th place in the Men's Slalom, which at the time was the best result ever for an Australian male Alpine skier at the Winter Olympics.
SNOW AUSTRALIA MEDAL RECIPIENTS |
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Peter Brockhoff |
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Hal Nerdal |
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Richard Walpole |
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Squaw Valley also has a special place in Australia's snow sports history due to Hal Nerdal's participation in the Nordic Combined event. A trailblazer for the sport, Nerdal is the only Australian Olympian ever to compete in a discipline that combines Ski Jumping and Cross-Country skiing. In that occasion the event consisted of a series of three jumps from Squaw Valley’s 60m-high normal hill, followed by a 15km Cross-Country race the next day. Nerdal finished 31st overall.
Norwegian-born Herlof "Hal" Nerdal had moved to Australia in 1951 to work as a carpenter on the Guthega Dam, one of the sixteen dams included in the Snowy Mountains scheme. The contract for the project had been awarded to a Norwegian company and several Scandinavian workers had already emigrated to Australia. Hal joined one of his older brothers, who had moved in 1950.
At the end of his contract, in 1955, Hal moved to Canberra, where he eventually settled down with his family after returning to Norway for a couple of years. In the ACT he was part of the original YMCA ski club, an organisation that would support him over the years, fundraising for his Olympic participation and even organising a big leaving do to celebrate his departure for the Games, a display of affection Nerdal still remembers fondly.
In fact, Nerdal's Olympic participation was in doubt until late in the process, as the ACT Ski Council had to raise money to contribute to their share of the air fares for the trip. They eventually reached their target, with most of the money coming from Nerdal’s club mates donations. Hal Nerdal became the first Olympic athlete out of Canberra.
"I think I was the first," Nerdal said from his home in Brisbane, QLD, where he welcomed the news of becoming one of the latest Snow Australia Medal recipients.
"It's something unusual, being good enough to go to the Olympics. It felt good."
The high number of Scandinavian immigrants who lived in the Snowy Mountains at the time provided a suitable competitive environment for Nerdal's talent to develop. But it also meant that he had to survive an extremely competitive qualification process to achieve his historical Olympic participation. This involved multiple qualifying events in NSW and Victoria, with selection up for grabs until the very end.
"There were a lot of Norwegian skiers in Australia then. We had a competition between us for who would ski the best time. There was a lot of competition against each other. The last one was in Victoria. I won the last one and I qualified," Nerdal said.
Nerdal reunited with more of his former countrymen in California, where he was invited to train with the Norwegian team ahead of the Olympics. He remembers meeting his old friends and sharing the Olympic experience as some of the best moments in his sporting career.
"To go to the Olympics, and meet my friends from home - there were about twenty Norwegians there and I knew most of them. We [the Australian team] were living downstairs in a unit and the Norwegians were upstairs. I trained a lot with them before the competition started."
After his ground-breaking participation at Squaw Valley 1960, Nerdal continued to compete in Cross-Country skiing and track running while in Canberra. His training did not change significantly throughout his career. A true multi-sport athlete, Nerdal had alternated Cross-Country skiing and running since his competitive days in Norway, when he used to be a 400m and 800m runner on the track, in the summer. Despite lacking formal training and not having access to a coach, he had continued the same regime in Canberra. He later identified this multi-disciplinary, all-year-round approach as one of the key factors for his success, together with his combative and persistent nature.
"Training, training, training. I did a lot of running in Canberra, cross-country running. I didn't have a coach, but you always know better than your coach anyhow," joked Nerdal.
Brockhoff, Walpole and Nerdal join other nine Winter Olympians who have already been nominated for the Snow Australia Medal and include Bob Arnott, Frank Prihoda and three-times Olympian Bill Day. Snow Australia will continue to announce the full list of recipients in the coming weeks.