Olympic gold medallist confirmed for 100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games
Friday 17 June 2011, 1:10PM
By Winter Games NZ
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A quality field of the world’s elite snow and ice sports athletes has already been confirmed for 100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games, including Olympic medallists and world champions, with entries still open for several weeks.
Athletes from 20 nations have already confirmed their spot at the Games, including Olympic gold medallist, Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway. Svindal took out three medals at the last Winter Olympics, a gold in the Super G, silver in downhill and bronze in the giant slalom. He is also multiple FIS World Champion and has 14 World Cup victories to his name. Svindal is joined by team mate Kjetil Jansrud who took out silver in the giant slalom at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
As well as racing the giant slalom at Coronet Peak in Queenstown, Svindal and Jansrud will also take on the World Cup standard Super G course at Mt Hutt, Canterbury. It was the quality of this course that saw 100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games expand into Canterbury for 2011.
“It’s still early days for nations to be entering their teams and to get such a high calibre entry from Norway shows just how high the level of competition is going to be,” said Winter Games NZ CEO, Arthur Klap.
“Also what better way than having an Olympic gold medallist racing at Mt Hutt to show the world that the majority of Canterbury is business as usual, despite the earthquakes. The importance of international promotion of the Canterbury ski fields at this time cannot be underestimated.”
Korea has confirmed it will send a 51 strong team with athletes competing in curling, cross country skiing, alpine skiing, figure skating, speed skating, freeski and snowboarding while Slovenia is sending Silka Cadar, current Junior World Champion in snowboard halfpipe and fourth in the world on the TTR rankings.
100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games takes place from 12- 28 August 2011 featuring 22 snow and ice sports over 38 events and involving 1,000 elite athletes from 50 nations.
The 16-day long Games also include a full Downtown Sessions festival programme featuring films, live music and entertainment and rail jam extravaganzas in Queenstown, Lake Wanaka, Dunedin and Methven.
The on-snow competition will take place at Coronet Peak, Cardrona Alpine Resort, Snow Park NZ, Snow Farm and Mt Hutt with the ice sports taking place at Naseby and Dunedin. For further information, visit www.wintergamesnz.com