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Australia’s best Para-alpine skiers are primed and prepped for the home stretch towards the Milano Cortina Paralympic Winter Games after three days of full throttle racing in the NSW Snowy Mountains.
Paralympians and Paralympic aspirants weaved and turned their way through giant slalom and slalom competition at the FIS Para-Alpine National Championships, making the most of the first FIS – International Ski and Snowboard Federation – event ever hosted in Australia.
The nation’s top-ranked Para-skiers all competed, including Beijing 2022 representative sit-skier Josh Hanlon, vision impaired skier Georgia Gunew and her guide Ethan Jackson, two-time Paralympian Sam Tait and rising stars Liana France and Fletcher Crowley.
The Championships took a surprise twist with Michael Milton entering and showing he had lost little of the skill and speed that earned him six Paralympic gold medals between Albertville 1992 and Salt Lake City 2002.
“It’s great to see Michael back on skis,” Australian Paralympic Team Chef de Mission Ben Troy said.
“It’s being a long, long time for him. But he’s legend of Para-alpine skiing, there’s no doubting that, and there’s a lot that especially our newer athletes, like Dylan (Molloy), a standing athlete, can learn from someone like Milto when it comes to race prep and the way you approach a race.
“Also, someone like Josh (Hanlon), seeing how he stacks up against one of the greats is no doubt a nice little challenge for him as well.”
Troy said the Championships, staged with the support of the NSW Government, could barely have gone better.
“It was the first FIS event in Australia since they’ve taken over the sport of Para-alpine skiing as the International Federation, but also our first high level Para-alpine racing in Australia since 2013,” he said.
“It’s so important to give our athletes access to home competition. Our domestic season has always been a long training block, but to see them to actually get onto the racecourse and attack gates and improve over the week was great.
“We squeezed in five races across three days and every athlete had improvements and developments over that time, which is great to see.”
Snow Australia Para Snowsports Manager Ali Bombardier said the event was a great example of inclusion, being run concurrently with the FIS National Championships for non-disabled athletes.
“It’s also been great for our Para-skiers to get more exposure to working with staff from Paralympics Australia, especially in the lead up to the Games next year,” Bombardier said.
“I really enjoyed seeing the collaboration which led to such a successful event.”
The week started with a classification session, which provided unclassified athletes, including youngsters France and Crowley, the chance to be qualified to compete in Para-sport without having to travel overseas.
“The NSW government supported classification to start off our week, which is such an integral part of the process of being able to compete in competitions like this one,” Troy said.
“It’s the first time we’ve had international classification for alpine skiing in a very long time. It’s saved us having to send an athlete off to Canada or Austria to classified in a Paralympic year.
“The government’s funding support then obviously allowed us to run these successful races, which is so important to the development of the next generation.”
The FIS event closes out the domestic season. The skiers head to Chile later in the month for a camp focusing on speed skiing. They then return for a break before heading to Europe in November before the Paralympic Games next March.
By David Sygall, Paralympics Australia.
Published 12 September, 2025.
