‘Toughest month I’ve ever experienced’

Ben Tudhope in action for Australia. Source: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP

AUSTRALIAN Paralympic chiefs admit their winter team failed in its goal of winning a gold medal in Sochi but say two bronze medals felt just as good after athletes and officials endured the toughest campaign they can remember.

Australia finished 19th on the medal table and only just reached their expected pass mark of claiming 2-5 medals.

It was more medals than Switzerland, The Netherlands and New Zealand, but still behind Great Britain (six), Belarus (three), Norway and Sweden (four), and not even in the same ballpark as host nation Russia (80).

But after the heavy emotional and physical toll the team endured in the lead up to the Games, then the mounting pressure they sweated under throughout, chief executive Jason Hellwig and chef de mission Chris Nunn said they would return home a proud and happy team.

The emotional toll started with the death of their snowboarding teammate Matthew Robinson after a race crash in Spain just a month before the Games.

It continued when flagbearer Cameron Rahles-Rahbula crashed out during training two days before the opening ceremony in Sochi, and when Melissa Perrine was disqualified from a near certain medal for using illegal equipment.

There were more crashes and mistakes in competition, then snowboarder Joany Badenhorst dislocated her knee in the warm-up of her one and only event and was taken to hospital.

"The 72 hours before Toby (Kane) won his bronze medal were the toughest 72 hours I've seen a team go through as the pressure builds," Hellwig said. "On top of I think, the toughest month I've ever seen a team go through.

"We came in under the most difficult circumstances I've ever seen a team come into a major Games to, we made a blue as a team with Mel when she was in gold medal contention and we had some things that didn't go our way.

"But that team stayed together and everyone kept doing their jobs, they found a way to keep smiling and stay focused and then that result came and it was the most wonderful release.

"The one thing we wanted to achieve was a gold medal and we didn't, so that's disappointing.

"Two medals is the bottom end of our range, we wanted to win 2-5, but they were two of the most rewarding medals I've been involved in."

Australian flagbearer Ben Tudhope was the shining light of our Paralympic campaign. Source: Getty Images

Kane and Gallagher won the medals, but the ray of sunshine the team so desperately needed came in the form of a 14-year-old snowboarder with cerebral palsy named Ben Tudhope.

Tudhope's top-10 finish in a 33-man field was as good as a gold medal and he was a perfect choice to carry the Australian flag in Sunday night's closing ceremony.

But the revelation of Tudhope aside, Hellwig does not hide from the fact that based on pre-Games expectations and potential, the team didn't deliver as hoped.

He still believes the team returned great "value for money" for government investment, but said he would continue lobbying for more funding - as tough as that might be - after a $200,000 shortfall in getting the team to Sochi.

"We don't have a God-given right to a cent from anybody, we've got to go and earn it by the way we perform, the way we conduct our business and the way our athletes conduct themselves," he said.

"Australians expect their teams to go well and have some success and we don't shirk that responsibility."

That's why planning for South Korea in 2018 started six months ago when the team hired its first ever high performance manager Pim Berkhout from The Netherlands.

With the retirement of Kane and Rahles-Rahbula and uncertainty surrounding Mitch Gourley's skiing future, Berkhout has been charged with finding a way of attracting new athletes to the program and fast-tracking their development.

He will consider targeting athletes from wheelchair summer sports and expanding the winter program into more than just alpine skiing.

"We planned for Korea months ago, he's (Berkhout) been here to observe and see where the gaps are and opportunities exist," Nunn said.

"This is my seventh Games and it's the first time we've had a plan leaving the Games and not said, 'Let's talk about this when we get home.'"

In the very least, Nunn expects interest to boom in the para-snowboarding program after Tudhope announced his arrival as a star of the future.

"Every time a new sport turns up at a Paralympic Games, the following four years it goes nuts," Nunn said.

"It is a sexy sport that's different to alpine, there's music blaring, these guys are different to the alpine guys, and kids are going to be attracted to it.

"We see the number of kids who are snowboarding in Australia, all we've got to do is find a few more Bennies and we're away.

"We couldn't have a better ambassador for the sport right now. People will want to take up snowboarding because of Ben Tudhope, I know that for a fact."

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