Big weekend ahead for NSWIS winter sport stars

A host of the NSWIS’s winter sport athletes are in action this weekend – some for the first time this season – in competitions in Europe and North America.

Kicking off at Val Thorrens in France are Ski Cross athletes Sami-Kennedy-Sim and Anton Grimus in the season’s first World Cup.

The event is part of a re-vamped competition schedule this season that has six World Cups in 15 days. Two live sessions of ski cross will be shown in Australia on Eurosport – 11pm ADST tonight and 9pm on Saturday night.

In Ruka, Finland the Moguls world cup season gets underway and first to hit the bumps in the qualifying rounds is #TeamNSWIS star Britt Cox, Australia’s first female World Cup medallist in mogul skiing.

World moguls men’s number two Matt Graham, who had a breakthrough with his first career victory last season, and teammate Brodie Summers will also make it to the starting blocks, with Eurosport again showing some live action – 4.30am ADST on Sunday.

Over in in Ridnaun, Italy, NSWIS biathlete Daniel Walker will compete in the sprint event at the second tier IBU Cup 2 event.

Walker (centre, pictured via Australian Biathlon News) has been training strongly, out performing the entire Turkish team in a time trial this week.

Over in the USA, NSWIS snowboarders Kent Callister and Nate Johnstone (pictured top) will compete alongside fellow Australian Scotty James in the opening round of the 2017 U.S Revolution Tour at Colorado’s Copper Mountain.

The trio will all contest the first of four stops on the tour in Copper’s world class 19-meter superpipe, their first time on the pipe for the season.

The national-level event brings together Olympic hopefuls who will earn points for their overall ranking in the WST.
Callister, 21, is ranked 26th in the world and will be searching for a repeat of his success at the Tour in 2012 where he won best trick with a FS inverted 900. Veteran Johnstone is ranked 37th.
In the women’s event, prodigious NSWIS 17-year-old Emily Arthur, one of Australia’s brightest winter sport talents, will take to the halfpipe. Arthur won silver in the halfpipe at the Lillehammer 2016 Youth Olympic Games in February.