Winter Sports

Australia receives snow in the Australian Alps and parts of Tasmania, and has indoor ice rinks in many cities. As a result, Australians are able to participate in a wide variety of winter sports, including skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, biathlon, freestyle skiing (including aerial skiing and moguls), ice hockey, curling, short track speed skating and figure skating. Australia has Olympic programs for some of these sports.

Australia has little or no facilities for ski jumping, and the ski runs are mostly too short for the faster competitive alpine skiing events like Super-G and Downhill. There are no bobsleigh track (used for bobsleigh, luge and skeleton) within Australia (the nearest one is in Japan), although Australia competes in slide events overseas, and there is a bobsleigh push track in the Docklands in Melbourne.

Australians participated in skiing as a sport from the 19th century, probably starting in Kiandra in 1861. The first indoor ice rink was probably opened in 1889, and another opened in Adelaide in 1903. Ice hockey was played as early as 1904.

The Mount Buller World Aerials is an aerial skiing event held in Mount Buller, Victoria. It is the first event in the World Cup calendar.

The Kangaroo Hoppet is a 42 km cross-country skiing race held in Falls Creek, Victoria. Held at the same time are the 21 km Australian Birkebeiner and the 7 km Joey Hoppet races. The Kangaroo Hoppet and the Australian Birkebeiner are part of the Worldloppet series of cross-country ski races.
Main article: Skeleton sport in Australia

A team of women competing in skeleton was created from athletes who had never competed in the sport before, planning to win a medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics.