NZSnowboard.com - The home of New Zealand Snowboarding

4th December 2009

As the Northern Hemisphere winter season hots up, New Zealand's elite winter sports athletes are heading into the final stretch for qualification and selection to the New Zealand Winter Olympic Team to Vancouver 2010. 

The New Zealand team is expected to be made up of around 17 athletes and will be named in the towards the end of January, less than a month ahead of the Olympic Games opening ceremony on 12 February.
 
Skeleton athletes Tionette Stoddard and Ben Sandford are among them. They are about to take on the worlds best sliders in Cesana near Torino in Italy for the third of seven world cup events needed to qualify for the New Zealand Olympic Team to Vancouver 2010.
 
At their most recent World Cup in Lake Placid last month the pair both placed in the top 10.
 
New Zealand Olympic Chef de Mission to Vancouver, Peter Wardell, has recently returned from the host city and says venues and facilities are second to none. The sliding centre where Stoddard and Sandford hope to compete has the worlds largest vertical drop of 152 metres and will enable athletes to reach speeds well in excess of 100kph.
 
The venues are superb and New Zealands young athletes will have every opportunity to excel in the world-class facilities Vancouver will provide, said Mr Wardell.
 
Elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, New Zealands young snowboarders, skiers and skaters are winding up their programmes to secure final placings. With the snowboard world cup season now underway, teenage snowboarders Ben Stewart (16) and Rebecca Sinclair (19) and their half-pipe team mates are in Colorado preparing for the Copper Mountain Grand Prix after retuning form the Saas Fe world cup where Sinclair proved she can foot it with the best placing 12th in a world class field. New Zealand is likely to secure places for three female and two male boarders.
 
Free-ski, cross country and alpine athletes are also continuing to compete for rankings points and qualification in the US and Europe. To date New Zealand has confirmed two cross country places, one short track with one long track spot to be confirmed. New Zealand is also pending a biathlon spot for Canadian New Zealander Sarah Murphy.
 
Winter Sports Programme High Performance Director Ashley Light says for the next two and a half months athletes will continue to prepare and compete. The pressure is building; qualifications, quotas and selection are by no-means secure. Following a successful winter season in New Zealand the athletes are now building toward their pinnacle event in February and are excited about the opportunities Vancouver has to offer.
 
Quota spots and qualification for athletes will be finalised by International Federations by January 18th . Sports will then nominate athletes to the New Zealand Olympic Committee selectors Barry Maister, Mike Stanley, Simon Wickham and Rosemarie Nye. The New Zealand Olympic Committee selection policies vary by sport and overall set a higher standard than IF qualification criteria. Selections will be announced week of January 20 2010, less than one month before the opening of the Winter Olympic Games. Profiles of the athletes hoping to compete in Vancouver are available at www.winterolympics.co.nz.
 







LINK:   www.winterolympics.co.nz









About the New Zealand Team to Vancouver 2010
New Zealand expects to field a team of between 15 and 20 athletes across a variety of winter disciplines including snowboarding, skeleton, alpine, cross country and freestyle ski as well as skating (short track and speed).  
 
New Zealand first took part in a Winter Olympic Games in 1952 in Oslo with a team of five athletes. Since then, New Zealand has had 98 winter Olympians and one winter medallist Annalise Coeberger who took silver in the slalom in 1992 at Albertville.
 
New Zealands largest Olympic Winter team to date comprised 18 athletes at Torino in 2006.
 
The team will be lead by Chef de Mission Peter Wardell from Christchurch.
 
 
 
About the New Zealand Olympic Committee
The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) is an independent organisation responsible for providing inspirational experiences for athletes at the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games Federation and Youth Games.
 
The NZOC actively promotes the history and values of the Olympic Movement through a wide variety of cultural and educational programmes, and operates according to the Olympic Charter and Commonwealth Games Federation Constitution.
 
The NZOC is funded principally through corporate sponsorship, trusts, Sport & Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) and the International Olympic Committee.
 
To find out more about the New Zealand team to Vancouver please visit www.winterolympics.co.nz.