High Performance Snow Community Unite for H3 Summit

Over one-hundred athletes across the winter sports community have come together in Melbourne for the H3 Summit (Health, Happiness, High Performance), in a joint initiative between the OWIA and Snow Australia.

The H3 Summit brings together OWIA contracted athletes and Snow Australia athletes from all ski, snowboard, ice and Paralympic disciplines for a day of presentations, workshops and activities, designed to promote positive culture and community amongst all winter athletes, coaches and support staff.

The theme of this year’s event was ‘High Performance Culture & Behaviours’, aligning closely to Australia's High Performance 2032+ Sport Strategy and the associated ‘Win Well’ vision. 

Snow Australia’s Athlete Wellbeing Manager Annie Geiger said the H3 Summit provides an excellent opportunity to integrate sports within the winter family with a focus on fostering a team culture that extends beyond the Olympic and Paralympic Teams.

“It’s always nice to have everyone in the room - this is our one chance a year to have everyone together as the full winter sport community,” Geiger said.

“In three years’ time, athletes will be selected onto one Olympic Team or one Paralympic Team, with everyone all together regardless of their discipline, so it’s hugely important we find opportunities to bring all athletes together, because regardless of their sport, they're all part of the larger Australian team culture and value set.”

The day consisted of keynote presentations from Athletics Olympic Champion Steve Hooker OAM and Basketball Australia 3x Olympian and Olympic coach Carrie Graf AM, sharing their philosophies on team culture and values that contribute to success. Leadership and Culture Consultant Liam Gooley presented on the shared winter sport DNA, before athletes had the opportunity to put the team culture frameworks into practice with a surfing activity at Melbourne’s URBNSurf facility.

“After today, I hope all participants take into their teams, and for themselves, a great understanding of what culture is and how they contribute to it not only as an individual, but how they manage it as a team. A positive culture is a team effort for the athletes, coaches and support staff - it's not just the athletes’ responsibility,” Geiger said.

Three-time cross country skiing Olympian Phil Bellingham said he loves the opportunity to see familiar faces across winter disciplines.

“It’s great catching up with everyone and to be around a lot of like-minded high performance athletes which is motivating in itself,” he said.

“The Olympics is the main time where we all come together and make really good friendships, so it’s just awesome to come back together and swap stories and hang out with these great people.”

Mogul skier Jackson Harvey has just returned home from his first full World Cup and World Championship season. The 20-year-old said he feels more inspired and motivated after a day surrounded by fellow elite athletes across all disciplines

“It’s really special, I feel very lucky to be here rubbing shoulders with all kinds of athletes,” Harvey said.

“I think there’s a tonne to be learned from athletes of different backgrounds, different sports and therefore different approaches to training. I think this is a unique environment in terms of global elite athletes, and I feel really motivated to be around this group.”

OWIA’s People & Performance Manager, Alana Rybicki, said the day was a resounding success.

“I think we’re feeling really accomplished today,” Rybicki said. “We set out to achieve our goal which was to focus on team culture and what it takes to ‘Win Well’, aligning with the HP 2032+ Strategy.

“I think we had a good combination of really incredible expert presentations and great interactive sessions, where our teams got some really valuable takeaways and actions that they can implement in their teams.”

This year’s H3 Summit was the first combined Athlete & Wellbeing seminar between OWIA and Snow Australia, with the workshops and information targeted to support staff as well as athletes, which Rybicki said been a really positive shift.

“It’s been great this year we’ve been able to have the Para athletes included, the ice sports and a lot of individual snow sports. With our new collaboration with Snow Australia, we’ve really increased our reach and been really inclusive in what we’re trying to achieve, building that winter sport culture and community.

“I think one of our biggest shifts in the athlete wellbeing service is that we started out just focusing on athletes and what we’ve realised over time is that we need all the support staff around those athletes to be understanding and on the same page as them when it comes to these cultural expectation, standards of behaviour, and team and personal values, so it’s been a real priority for us to target these activities at the entire cohort, not just the athletes.”

The extended winter sports community will join the high performance cohort at the Snow Australia Awards in Melbourne this evening, where Athletes of the Year and Coaches of the Year will be announced following a record breaking international season.

Tune in live to the 2023 Snow Australia Awards Live Stream, presented by SportsCover on the Snow Australia Facebook Page from 7.30pm AEDT.