Their achievements represented a real turning point for Australia as a nation at the Winter Games but also created a major shift in the culture of the Australian Winter Team, a change still evident in today’s athletes.

Prior to 2002, there were so many outstanding athletes who consistently delivered top results at the highest level, but gold at the Games was elusive. Australia had realistic chances of delivering ten years earlier when the Short Track Skating Team won the World Championships and entered the ‘92 Games as the gold medal favourites. The Aerial Freestyle Ski team had skiers that had ranked in the top 5 in the world enter both the ‘94 and ‘98 Games, yet gold remained out of reach.

What would it take to win Gold?

In Lillehammer at the ’94 Games, the Short Track Team of Richard Nizielski, Steven Bradbury, Kieran Hansen and Andrew Murtha delivered Australia’s first medal, a bronze - this proved it was possible for Australia to medal at the Games.

Steven Bradbury recalls this time and what it meant for him and winter sport in Australia, “Winning the bronze in Lillehammer was a goal achieved,” he said.

“It was a big thing in Australia to get that monkey off our back. We’d gone in at the previous Games in Albertville as the favourites for the gold and finished nowhere.”

“So, winning the first ever medal for Australia, in a way felt like a gold medal back then.”

This sparked a chain of events that would change Australian winter sport forever. After that first medal, there was a stronger belief in what could be achieved.

In 1995 the owner of Mt Buller Ski Lifts Rino Grollo injected half a million dollars a year over four years into the Australian Ski Federation (ASF) and created the Australia Ski Institute (ASI).

Geoff Henke AO Chair of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia (OWIA), spoke about how this came to pass.

“Rino Grollo he said to me, "Geoff, what if I gave you $1 million, what would that do for programs?"

“And I said, "Rino, this is what I'd do, but I'm telling you now, you're not going to do it."

“And he said, "Look, just give me an idea of what it would involve and ring me back tomorrow."

“Which I hung up and did and I rang him back the next day. “I said, "Rino, before we start, you're not putting in $1 million. This is ridiculous."

“He said, "Geoff, if you can convince me that we'd get somewhere with it, I will do it," so we formed the Australian Ski Institute.”

Over the next four years, in the lead up to the 1998 Games in Nagano Japan, the ASI spent the funds largely on Alpine and Freestyle Skiing programs. This ultimately led to Australia’s second medal at the winter Games, when Zali Steggall took bronze in the Women’s Slalom event, but it also led to one of the greatest failures in the history of Australian winter sport.

Mr Henke talks about the impact of Zali’s bronze at the ‘98 Games and how this once again set a new course.

“When Zali won the bronze, John [Coates] was with Craig McLatchey who was the Secretary General of the AOC at the time, and a supporter of the ASI, and myself, we'd been heckling John in a nice way, quite friendly, that we should really form an institute not only for skiing, but of all the winter sports at the elite level."

“So, John said to me, "Let's go and have a cup of coffee." He was elated [with Zali’s medal]. He couldn't believe his eyes. In slalom of all events, which is very difficult, it's very technical.”

“Anyway, the three of us, Craig McLatchey, John and myself, we sat down, and he [John] said to us.”

 "I've been thinking. I know that I knocked you back before, because I was concerned that we might need more funding for the Sydney Olympics, for the summer Games, for our sports that are competing.”

“However, they seem to be well satisfied financially and there's no programs that we can't do that they've specified, so why don't we go ahead with that idea about forming an institute consisting of all the winter sports at the elite level."

This created a vision for what winter sport could be in Australia. The Australian Olympic Committee then formed the Australian Winter Sports Institute and on 1 July 2001 it became the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia. Zali’s success at Nagano was not the only influencing factor in the development of the OWIA.

The IOC offsetting the Winter Games from the Summer between ’92 and ’94 helped to create a stronger focus on Winter. It also delivered an opportunity to expand the schedule of winter events seeing both Mogul and Aerial Skiing added to the program in respective years.

The ASI in the lead up to the ‘98 Games saw freestyle skiing as a key opportunity, investing in both moguls and aerials.

This was paying off, with Kirstie Marshall winning the World Championships Aerial test event in Nagano and finishing the ‘97 season ranked second in the world with Jacqui Cooper not far behind in fifth position. Even in the Men’s Aerials event Jono Sweet reached the World Cup podium just two weeks prior to the ‘98 Games.

However, one by one, each of these athletes bowed out of the Nagano Games  - a disastrous result but one that allowed the AIS to learn a valuable lesson.

Geoff Lipshut, Beijing Chef de Mission and OWIA CEO, was the manager of the Australian Freestyle Team at the time. He recently reflected on the learnings of the ’98 Games how this helped shape the OWIA and ultimate underpinned a structure that would set up Australia for gold in 2002.

“[The 1998 Nagano Games] was an ultimate learning experience for me, because it was a disaster.”

“So, we learned from that disaster. We restructured the coaching program because it simply was not geared in a way that could deliver results in a major event context."

“I remember I sat down with Ian [Chesterman] and we talked about it. Chesty and I, we said, “Right, well this is what happened let’s do the opposite. We then set up a more bespoke coaching program that would enable athletes to learn in their own unique way, while remaining part of and firmly connected to the Australian Team.”

Over the next four years the new coaching program was implemented under the newly structured OWIA and new talent like Alisa Camplin and Lydia Lassila began to emerge.

Finally, Australia struck gold at the Winter Games not once but twice!

Steven Bradbury and Alisa Camplin while winning gold at the Games in Salt Lake City, were at very different stages of their careers.

Steven had been competing at the elite level for 10 years. He’d left some of his best performances on the World Cup tour but was frustrated that he’d been to three Olympic Games and the world had never seen his best performance.

While Alisa was arriving at her first Games having started on the World Cup tour in ’97 and while she had been on the World Cup podium, she had never won an event.

Some of Bradbury’s most successful moments as a skater have been overshadowed by the famous Final where he took gold. Steven recently spoke about the moment he won gold and what it was like being at the end of his career but still being a fierce competitor.

“Crossing the finish line, I had sixteen and a half thousand people booing because there was an American involved in the pile up and they all wanted him to win.”

“So that was a strange emotion as I crossed the line, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to celebrate or hide, the look on my face tells the story. My mind went straight into, "Okay, what are the judges going to decide?” Someone's getting disqualified here. Maybe there's going to be a re race."

“So, there was probably about four minutes of nobody really knowing what the actual result was going to be.”

“And I thought, well, if I am announced here, I'm not getting the Australian flag and doing a victory lap, that's for sure. Wouldn't feel right to do that under these circumstances where the rest of the worlds just fallen over in front of me.”

However, leading into the finals, in the quarters, Bradbury had one of his most substantial victories.

“I was fortunate enough to put myself in a position where I skated my best in the quarter finals. I beat a Canadian guy by the name of Marc Gagnon, four-time world champion. I hadn't beaten him for eight years. I beat him in the quarter finals, and that was all I had.”

Steven was one of the most experienced competitors in the final that day and he was physically exhausted, his goal was to race smart and stay in the game.

“And from there, those other blokes that I couldn't beat on my best day anymore all fell over in front of me and I was in the position to capitalise when things went wrong.”

Steven Bradbury worked exceptionally hard in the 15 years leading up to that medal, he played it smart and delivered a win that will be forever remembered as one of the great moments in Australian Olympic history.

Alisa Camplin on the other hand was a dark horse leading into the Games, she had the degree of difficulty and the form to win but not the experience of her teammate Jacqui Cooper.

Cooper landed a jump badly in practice giving her a serious knee injury only days out from the Games that forced her out of the competition.

This placed Australia’s hopes of a medal on the shoulders of Camplin and Lydia Lassila, Lydia had only skied her first World Cup a year earlier.

Mentally, Alisa was on top of her game. Aerial Skiing is one of the most mentally taxing sports on the planet. You must be prepared to put your body completely on the line and be in total control of your own fear, that’s on top of any normal psychological games your competitors might throw your way.

Alisa reflected what it was like completing at the Salt Lake Games.

“It was an opportunity to prove myself. I'd always been an underdog. I'd kind of got there the hard way with funding and fighting my way through."

“By the time you get to the Olympics, there's a sense of, fulfilling your destiny and excitement that you've really made something special happen. The opportunity for me, it was a big thing. Everyone said it wasn't going to happen.

“I had to work super hard for it and I was just so happy going in to know that I'd never be disappointed in myself, that I'd done everything I could to make the dream happen, to have the possibility,” said Camplin.

“The dream was to go to the Olympics, and I knew I was competitive and that I'd have the degree of difficulty. I think my last year into the Olympics was where I really pulled it all together and I got all the resources that I really needed, the right coach, the sports psychologist, and I really was able to focus exclusively on myself. Getting my own little bubble and really get the last 10% right to make or break it. So, by the time I did get to the Olympics, I was already in a no regrets situation.”

“I also had a very solid clinical understanding that it was very possible for me to medal at the Olympics, and that was my expectation, to deliver on that. To come away with the gold, it was like shaking the champagne bottle.”

“Six weeks prior to the Games I’d broken my ankles. Psychologically this was like a cork had been held in and there'd been no emotion. It was so clinical for so long that when I landed my final jump and was just allowed to celebrate it was such a relief, it was like letting out that champagne bottle. I'd done my job.”

“So, in that moment when I got to compete in a way that I know I would be okay no matter the outcome, I just then felt this euphoria and relief and gratitude towards the AOC and the OWIA and my family, my employer, and my friends.”

So how did this change Winter Sport?

The race for Australia’s first winter gold began long before 2002 with numerous different sports working largely in insolation and only a handful of people ever truly believing that gold could even be possible.

When Steven and Alisa won gold, it proved gold was now on the table for Australian winter athletes, it made gold attainable, and it changed the way the world viewed Australia as a winter nation.

As Steve Bradbury said, “Winning gold in Salt Lake City really confirmed in the rest of the world’s eyes, that Australia was no longer a numbers filler at the Winter Games.”

The way the world saw the Team was not the only change that happened. In bringing all winter sports together under the OWIA and delivering the nation’s first gold, connected people in the winter sports community in a way that had not been done before. It created something that we’d never really had, and never really expected, a Team.

Alisa Camplin spoke about the impact of winning gold on the Team and as a turning point in Australian winter sport.

“When Steven and I realised we were higher on the medal tally than Austria, at that moment, as Australians we were saying, "Don't doubt us in winter sport anymore." I felt like from that point on it wasn't about individuals anymore. From that point, it was, "Here we are as a winter Team. See us. Be proud of us. We worked so hard to represent our country and our sports. Winter Olympics is here, see it and love it."

“At that moment I had this really big sense of our whole community and everyone who'd fought before, and now, what that could do for the future of people not having to show up as individuals and fight as individuals, but as a Team now that there would be a bigger momentum and support.”

“We had some outstanding individuals pre 2002 who have done some pretty amazing things, but I think the thing was that it was individuals. I got a sense after 2002, or at least I felt like that was our birth point of becoming a community and a Team.”

“And as the Team has grown the culture of individual excellence that was at the heart has also perpetuated. So you've got the culture of drive, determination, excellence. How we do what we do has permeated deeply within the culture of the sport and the development of the sport and the depth and breadth within the different disciplines of winter sport.”

In bringing this all together, the OWIA has built a unique high-performance environment. They have learnt the strength of developing athletes as individuals whilst building a framework to keep them connected to a community creating a greater sense of team, strength, and connection.

Gold in 2002 forever changed the Australian Winter Olympic Team. It’s no longer a group of individuals aspiring to get to the Games with a real shot at a medal. It established a new feeling within the team, one that Australia, in eyes of the world had finally arrived in winter sport, bringing every athlete past and present a little closer together. That all our winter athletes are somehow connected and are part of something truly amazing.

Jonathon Sweet