Six Snow Australia Medal recipients announced, including alpine skiing Olympic medalist Zali Steggall

On the 23rd anniversary of her historic Olympic bronze medal, 1999 Alpine World Champion Zali Steggall OAM was included in the latest group of recipients of the Snow Australia Medal alongside moguls skiers Nicholas Cleaver and Adrian Costa, acroskier Mark Pigott and cross-country skiers Anthony Evans and Paul Gray. 

The six athletes were on the same Olympic team at the 1992 Albertville Winter Games, when Cleaver and Costa became the first Australian athletes to participate in an Olympic Moguls competition. At the same edition of the Games, Pigott became the only Australian male Olympian in acroski, which was on the program as a demonstration event.  Evans also had his first Olympic experience in 1992, on his way to becoming the first Australian cross-country skier to compete in three Olympic Games at Nagano 1998 - a feature two-time Olympian Paul Gray might have achieved, had he not switched disciplines and narrowly missed selection for Lillehammer 1994 as a biathlete. 

Zali Steggall was only 17 when she made her Olympic debut in the French Alps, a young talent with no World Cup experience and barely a FIS race under her skis. “My first Olympic Games was a really incredible experience,” she recently told Snow Australia. “I had first set the goal of competing at the Olympic Games when I was about 13. I remember watching Vreni Schneider and Alberto Tomba win their double gold medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and thinking - Do you know what? That's what I want to do. I want to go to the Olympics for Australia.”

Steggall had spent a lot of time in France growing up, so she was more familiar with living overseas than most young Australian athletes. But she still had to spend four or five months of the winter season abroad and be based in Europe for long periods of time, to compete and train. “The journey of my skiing career, from that first Winter Games through to my fourth Olympics in 2002, was really a huge learning curve,” she explained. “Every year you had to chip away at your world ranking, bring your FIS points down, compete in the Europa Cup and then compete in the World Cup. It did take time, these things don't happen overnight.”

Plus, those were still the 90s or, as Steggall put it, the ‘pre-internet’ era. “You have to think those days were pre-internet, pre-social media. You didn't have that connectivity that you have now, so you would travel with lots of books. Actually, I did one of my university degrees by correspondence while I was skiing! It was more disconnected and it was hard. It was hard to be away for so long.”

Steggall was an all-rounder at the beginning of her career, competing in all alpine disciplines. But by the time she got selected to the Australian team for Lillehammer, two years after Albertville, the idea of specialising in the slalom had really crystallized in her mind. “After the Lillehammer Olympics I decided I really wanted to focus on the slalom,” she confirmed. “I wanted to be great at one thing and not just average at everything.”

	Nick Cleaver Discipline: Freestyle Skiing Olympic Participation:  Albertville 1992, Lillehammer 1994 Medal awarded in: 2021		Adrian Costa Discipline: Freestyle Skiing Olympic Participation: 1992 Albertville, 1994 Lillehammer, 1998 Nagano, 2002 Salt Lake City Achievements: Silver Medal World Cup 1998, Chatel (FRA) - Dual Moguls Medal awarded in: 2021
	Anthony Evans Discipline: Cross Country Skiing Olympic Participation: 1992 Albertville, 1994 Lillehammer, 1998 Nagano Medal awarded in: 2021		Paul Gray Discipline: Cross Country Skiing Olympic Participation: Albertville 1992, Nagano 1998 Medal awarded in: 2021
	Mark Pigott Discipline: Freestyle Acro SKi Olympic Participation: 1992 Albertville Medal awarded in: 2021		Zali Steggall OAM Discipline: Alpine Skiing Olympic Participation: Albertville 1992, Lillehammer 1994, Nagano 1998, Salt Lake City 2002 Achievements: Olympic Bronze medal, Slalom (Nagano 1998); World Champion, Slalom (Vail 1999), World Cup gold, Slalom (Park City, 1997), World Cup silver, Slalom (Mammoth Mountain, 1998) Medal awarded in: 2021
See All Snow Australia Medallists Here

So that’s what she did for the following four years, patiently working her way through the World Cup rankings, the idea of an Olympic podium becoming more and more real in her head.

Steggall confessed that she had started believing in the possibility of an Olympic medal in Albertville, six years earlier. “My closest friend was [New Zealand alpine skier] Annelise Coberger and I very much considered her a mentor. In Albertville she was about 20 and she won a silver, the first ever Winter Olympic medal for the southern hemisphere. I was there, training with her, and I remember thinking - wow, this really is possible from the southern hemisphere.”

By the time the Nagano Winter Olympics came around, Steggall had already tasted victory, taking a World Cup gold in slalom at the beginning of the 1997/98 season in Park City, USA. From there, she had carried that winning momentum all the way through to the start gate of the Olympic slalom.

“The feeling in Nagano was amazing. I was in the top-15 in slalom, so I had a top-seed start number and conditions were really good. I finished the first run in third place, but I only had a tiny margin on fourth place, so really nothing was safe,” she said. At that point, the three-hour break between the two runs became a test of mental fortitude. 

“It's a long time to get nervous! But I stayed really focused. I remember that my team and all the officials weren't allowed to come and talk to me, because this was the last event of the Olympic Games that we had an Australian competitor in. The team hadn't medaled yet, so there was a huge pressure to deliver,” Steggall said.

“I remember that second run in Nagano like a dream. It all just clicked into place. I was standing at the top in the start hut and the coach told me to just go for it, trust the preparation. It was quick, really fast paced, but I remember clearly those last three-four gates into the finish line. Then the huge crowd and the noise, but in your head, it's just like silence, as you quickly turn around to look at the screen to see where you are.”

She was in first place. With two athletes still to race, Steggall was guaranteed a medal.

“As soon as your brain computes that, the noise comes in and the euphoria is amazing. It was just one of those unbelievable ‘pinch yourself’ days.”

Steggall said that the transition from taking home that first, historic Australian Olympic medal in alpine skiing to backing up that success with another major achievement was very important for her. She was really keen to show the world that her medal was not just a one-off, a fluke caused by the particular racing conditions of the day. That opportunity came the following year at the Vail 1999 World Championships. After finishing the first run in sixth place, Steggall played to her strengths in the second run, on a course set by her coach. Her fearless and technically sound skiing produced huge time gaps on the hardest section of the slope and built an unassailable lead. Steggall was Australia’s first alpine skiing World Champion.

“It was a funny day because they got the anthems wrong during the medal ceremony. So there I am, standing on top of the podium. It's a huge moment and they start playing this anthem that I had no idea where it came from. But then there's a huge crowd of Aussies and they started singing ‘Advance Australia Fair’. It was really cool,” Steggall reminisced. 

Speaking with Zali Steggall, it becomes apparent how she is a great example of dedication and determination. Throughout her life she always set herself new challenges and established a clear course to conquer them. Then she would get to work. Behind her success there is an equal amount of talent and long hours of training in the gym or on the snow, in horrible weather. 

“And hours and hours of loneliness away from family and friends,” she confirmed. “It does take focus and dedication. It comes at the cost of everything else. I do firmly believe that. It's absolutely worth it, but you have to be prepared to commit to that level of hard work.”

Still, her advice to young athletes is to ‘dream big’. “Of course. But you've also got to back yourself and it's not going to be easy. To think that success is going to happen somehow, by some magical way, is just wrong. It takes incredible determination and resilience.”

When she retired, in 2002, Steggall used a similar blueprint and decided to set herself new challenges, refusing to live in the past. 

“Life after being an athlete is really interesting,” she admitted. “It’s really hard to redefine yourself. When you’re no longer a skier, or an athlete, what are you?

“At the press conference where I announced my retirement, at the 2002 Olympic Games, a journalist asked me what I thought was the highlight of my life. I said, well, I hope I haven't had it yet, because I'm 27. If I've already had my highlight, there's a long way to go! 

“For me, it was really important to find the next challenge. So I had two kids, which I think it’s challenging in itself!” she said.

Steggall then followed up her Bachelor of Arts in Community Media and Communications with a law degree and went to the bar for ten years - also acting as an arbitrator for the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (she also attended the 2018 Winter Games in that capacity). After that, she decided that she wanted to engage with social issues and ran for Parliament, becoming an MP in 2019.

“It's an incredible privilege to be in a position like a Member of Parliament to make a difference. There are so many issues we need to focus on. A big one of our time is climate change, and I think anyone in winter sports will totally appreciate that. It's a big challenge, but I always revert back to my sporting analogies and how I approached sport: just because the challenge seems impossible, or really big, it doesn't mean you can't do it. But you have to break it back into manageable pieces and work out your trajectory and how you get there.”

Zali Steggall’s sons are now teenagers, aged 17 and 15. Of course they are aware of their mother’s skiing results, but still see her primarily as their mum. “I'm very thankful to be awarded this Snow Australia Medal,” she said. “I think it's a great initiative to commemorate and recognise many people's contribution to our journey through winter sports. I feel incredibly honoured and privileged to be awarded the Medal and it will sit with pride with the rest of the ski memorabilia.”  Maybe she will keep it next to her other medals, somewhere her children can see it. “It’s always good for them to have a reminder that I am not just their nagging mum,” she joked. 

See All Snow Australia Medallists Here