The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea has seen some incredible performances and some outstanding results, however with a biased eye, none better than Central Coast local Matt Graham’s performance in the men’s moguls where he took silver. Canada’s all-conquering Mikael Kingsbury who has dominated moguls skiing for years beat him for gold.
Why is this performance ‘unbelievable’? As Matt himself said, “it’s unbelievable”, his father Stephen said the same, and his strong support group literally saying how unbelievable his result is. The facts are; Graham lives in Gosford, the nearest snow for training is some six hours away at Perisher and growing up this is where his family took him and his brother every weekend as he and David pursued their dreams of being the best in the world at mogul skiing.
Matt Graham is a former Central Coast Academy of Sport Future Star athlete, he and his brother David were both outstanding junior athletes in sailing and a planned meeting with their mum and dad back in 2006 was the catalyst for the Academy to introduce the highly successful Future Stars Program.
Ian Robilliard the Managing Director of the Academy said of that meeting: “It seems like yesterday that I met with Stephen and Deb at Crowne Plaza Terrigal to discuss how the Academy could help their children who were basically competing in sports outside of the offerings the Academy had at the time. The idea of a support service program where athletes could get gymnasium access, access to professional service providers in sports psychology, strength and conditioning, physiotherapy, marketing and promotion and the like was basically formed. As they say the rest is history but the Future Stars Program has seen some outstanding Central Coast athletes come through since its inception following the meeting in 2006. Olympians Matt Dawson, Jai Opeteai, and many Australian representatives and professional athletes have come through the Future Stars channel. I’m delighted for Matt’s success, he has chased this dream since he was a young lad travelling to Perisher each Friday from school to pursue his dream. I take my hat off to him, his mum and dad and his family for the untiring support they have provided and no doubt continue to provide, it’s great to see that dreams really can come true”.
Graham becomes only the 13th Australian Winter Olympian to claim a medal, his result truly is unbelievable due to the tyranny of distant and untiring his pursuit of excellence.
Location
PyeongChang, South Korea
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