Mixed bag for NSWIS athletes at Sochi

It was a mixed bag of results for the NSWIS athletes at the Sochi Paralympic Games with Manly’s Ben Tudhope announcing himself as a star of the future, whilst Griffith’s Joany Badenhorst endured a tough Paralympics debut dislocating her kneecap in a training accident just hours ahead of her scheduled appearance in the very first Para-snowboard cross event.

On Friday, 14-year-old Tudhope continued his monumental rise in the sport finishing 10th in the men’s Para-snowboard cross event going under the minute for each of his three runs to post an overall time of 1m56.84s. Teammate – 41-year-old Trent Milton, a right leg amputee from Bonny Hills near Port Macquarie – finished 20th in the same event with 2m07.95s.

Milton was astonished with the efforts of Tudhope and said the rising star had a big future ahead of him. “Little Benny Tudhope is a star of the future," Milton said.

"Little Benny had a great result today so Australian snowboarding is in great hands. The course was brilliant, the atmosphere was brilliant; I can’t complain. It was a bad day in the office for me but that’s about all.

“But in Benny you’re looking at a star of the future – and I gave him a hug at the end and told him so.”

The NSWIS’ other Para-snowboard cross athlete Joany Badenhorst was a late withdrawal in the women’s event. Badenhorst was completing her last training run on the Rosa Khutor course but crashed on a sweeping right turn, ending up with her board entangled in the netting, which lines the perimeter.

Whilst deflated by her injury, Badenhorst was upbeat about her Sochi Paralympics campaign and immediately turned her attention to Pyeongchang in 2018. "I started thinking about Korea the moment this injury happened," Badenhorst said.

“As soon as I realised something was very wrong with my leg, I knew that competing here was out for me because I knew it was serious enough to keep me out of the race.

“But I thought, `you know what, there’s always Korea’, so I was talking about it a lot with my doctors. I’ve got my mind set on Korea already. I’m ready to go and I’ve got four years to get fitter and better and get on top of my game."

Gosford’s Victoria Pendergast negotiated another two clean runs in the women’s Giant Slalom on Sunday to add to her two clean runs in the women’s Slalom event on Wednesday.

It was a successful campaign for the 23-year-old sit-skier who was one of the few athletes to master the tricky conditions at the Rosa Khutor ski complex.

“It was definitely a bumpy ride down some parts there,’’ Pendergast said after her 10th placed finish. “They (course preparation workers) did the best they could with the snow they had. I’m happy to let the snow melt now after this.”

The fifth NSWIS athlete in action over the weekend was vision-impaired skier Melissa Perrine. Again it wasn’t her day, as the Welby local fell and slid nearly 50 metres down the course on her first run in the Giant Slalom.

That became her third DNF (did not finish) in Sochi after a fourth in the Downhill on the opening day of competition and a disqualification for wearing a non-approved visor in Super Combined event.

“They are not the best results I wanted. That’s for sure. I’ve had a lot of bad luck – a lot of things have gone against me. That’s the way things go sometimes,’’ Perrine said of her Games.

“I wouldn’t say they have been the Games from hell because I’ve skied well; skied fast so that’s always a good thing."