Green and gold Winter Olympics dream

Volume 6 Number 2 February 8 - March 8 2010

The University of Melbourne will be flying the Australian flag at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Rod Warnecke reports.

Second year Architecture student Katya Crema and Physiotherapy alumna Cameron Rahles-Rahbula are days away from representing Australia at the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games in Vancouver, Canada.

While Melburnians have been sweltering under a summer heatwave, Ms Crema and Mr Rahles-Rahbula have skied their way through a continuous winter in the snowfields of Europe and North America in preparation for a tilt at Olympic and Paralympic glory.

Ms Crema will compete in the Skier Cross, an event which is making its debut at the Games. Action-packed for skiers and spectators alike, the event sees four skiers skiing down a twisting and undulating course at the same time – the first to the bottom wins.

“I have been dreaming about this my entire life, and now that it is actually happening it is almost surreal”, says Ms Crema after being officially announced in the Olympic team the day after Australia Day.

Of her dream to represent Australia on the world’s largest white sporting stage, Ms Crema like most young athletes is most grateful for the unwavering support of her family.

“I will be spending four days in Aspen with the family prior to heading to Vancouver. I feel like I have hardly seen them in the past year, given that I’ve been away for almost eight of the 12 months!

“So I think they deserve a few days with me at least; given what they’ve been through too for the past year. It will be a well-earned little vacation; and some time to rest up before what will be the biggest, most amazing and exciting two weeks of my life.”

And as Ms Crema stands atop the starting gates for her first Skier Cross run on the Winter Olympic Games, you can be sure her grandfather will be especially proud of the part he’s played in helping his grand daughter’s dream come true – he built a replica of a starting gate in Ms Crema’s backyard so that she could practise while continuing her studying at Melbourne.

“It’s the same dimensions so I train on it ... when there’s no snow available” says Ms Crema.

“Even if I do just 20 – 30 starts every day I think that repetition is going to help me out a lot.”

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula will be competing in his third Winter Paralympics, having represented Australia in Salt Lake City (2002) and Torino (2006). The above-knee amputee has been ranked number one in the world for the Alpine Slalom Standing class for much of the year, and will be one of the race favourites come Games’ time.

The experience of being a two-time Paralympian will help settle the nerves as Mr Rahles-Rahbula aims for his first Paralympic medal. But despite being the reigning World Champion, he’s under no illusions as to the difficulty of capturing that much-coveted gold medal.

“In skiing, there’s no guarantees. Coming into Turin, I was having a great season and it became a bad week for me,” says Rahles-Rahbula, where he and fellow Australian athletes were training in Vail, Colorado just after Christmas.

“There’s already enough pressure and excitement leading into a Games because we’ve had four years of competition. So you can’t bog yourself down with stuff from the past.”

A resident of Trinity College while studying Physiotherapy at Melbourne, Cameron represented the University in alpine skiing on a number of occasions and was awarded Blues in 2004 and 2005. He was also a recipient of a High Performance Scholarship from 2004 – 2007.


The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games are from 12 – 28 February. Katya Crema will be competing in the women’s Skier Cross from 23 February. The Paralympic Games are from 12 – 21 March. Cameron Rahles-Rahbula will be competing in the men’s Alpine Standing Slalom on 20 March.