Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/142338
closeup White gold Glenn Cullen speaks to three of our medal hopefuls – Alex 'Chumpy' Pullin, Torah Bright and Lydia Lassila – as Australia eyes off the 2014 Winter Olympics. It's hard to imagine that a country so immersed in beaches, barbecues and backyard footy could become such a major player in the world of alpine sports. But Australia is expected to send its largest-ever team to February's Winter Olympics in Sochi. Fifty or more Aussies will don the green and gold in Russia; and they won't be there to make up the numbers, either. Australia is realistically targeting up to four medals from the Games of the 22nd Winter Olympiad and a finish among the top 15 countries in the world. If that happens, it will be the country's most successful Winter Olympics ever. So how did it come to this? It seems that what Australia lacks in massive mountain ranges and snow-locked 8 winters, it more than makes up for in talent and targeting the right athletes. The Olympic Winter Institute of Australia (originally called the Australian Institute of Winter Sports) was established in 1998 after the Nagano Olympics. Since that time, its staff has devised programs to turn gymnasts into aerial skiers and skaters and surfers into half-pipe riders, with great success. In the winter-sports World Cups, World Championships and Olympic Games since, Australia has picked up 226 medals – about three times the number our athletes had amassed in the 30 years before. Our resorts and 'feeder' towns have played their part, too: elite athletes have honed their skills on the slopes of Thredbo, Perisher, Mount Buller, Falls Creek and Mount Hotham, bunking down in places such as Cooma, Jindabyne, Albury, Mansfield, Myrtleford, Bright and Mount Beauty. Though seasoned world travellers, they'll head off to places that still seem quite foreign – such as the sprawling city of Sochi on Russia's Black Sea coast, better known as a summer resort, with palm trees and pebbled beaches. The city's bid to host the Winter Games initially appeared tenuous. But as Sochi is backed by the 3,000metre-plus-high Caucasus mountains – and a staggering US$50 billion in development funding (the most of any Olympics, summer or winter), the feeling is that the 2014 Sochi Olympics will be a great success. It's a feeling Australia's Winter Olympians will be hoping for themselves.