Australia at the 1994 Winter Paralympics
| Australia at the 1994 Winter Paralympics |
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| IPC code | AUS | ||||||||
| NPC | Australian Paralympic Committee | ||||||||
| Website | www |
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| in Lillehammer | |||||||||
| Competitors | 6 in 1 sport | ||||||||
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Medals Ranked 11th |
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| Winter Paralympics appearances (overview) | |||||||||
The 1994 Winter Paralympics were held in Lillehammer, Norway. Australia sent six male skiers, who won three gold, two silver and four bronze medals. Australia, at the time, achieved their best ever performance at a Winter Paralympics, finishing 5th overall in the alpine skiing competition, 9th in the medal standings, and 11th in the total medal count out of 31 nations.
Despite the previous Winter Olympics being held in 1992, a 1986 decision made by the International Organising Committee (IOC) was implemented, denoting that the Summer and Winter Olympic Games be held on alternating 4 year cycles, occurring on even years. Thus, the 1994 games were held a mere 2 years after the previous Winter Olympics of Albertville (France) in 1992. The Games were held from Thursday March 10, to Saturday March 19, and consisted of 133 events across 5 sports. 31 Nations participated, with a total of 471 participating athletes. The 1994 Winter Paralympics were also the first Games organized by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
The logo for the 1994 Winter Paralympics featured a white sun figure on a blue background, depicting the sun people. It aimed to evoke feelings of power, vitality, strength, and energy, seen as characteristics of disabled athletes. This was the final time the five multicolored 'tae-guks', located at the base of the illustration, were used in connection with the Paralympic Games.
A competition was conducted for the creation of the mascot for the 1994 Winter Paralympics, with Tor Lindrupsen winning with his drawing of 'Sondre'. The mascot for the Games, 'Sondre', is a friendly teenage troll boy who is 'charming, good-natured, elegant, and poised', and has his left leg amputated above the knee. The name of the mascot was decided via a competition, and is named after the great skiing pioneer, Sondre Nordheim.
Given the shorter than usual hiatus of two years between Paralympic Games, the Australian Winter Paralympic team began a two year intensive squad development and training program. To accompany this program, high profile coach Steve Graham was appointed as coach of the winter Paralympic team. Six separate camps were conducted in Australia between October 1992 and October 1993, followed by the selection of the Winter Paralympic team in November 1993. The team's training concluded with 4 weeks training and racing in Tamsweg, Austria, followed by one week of training at Hafjell, Norway - the location of the Alpine Skiing events during the Games. Tamsweg was chosen as a training site due to its similarity in conditions to Hafjell, Norway.
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