Highest Snow Sports Industry Accolades Awarded

Highest Snow Sports Industry Accolades Awarded

The ski and snowboard industry’s highest accolades, Contribution to Snowsports and Snowsports Athlete of the Year, were awarded last night at the New Zealand Snowsports Council Awards in Christchurch.

The award for Snowsports Athlete of the Year went to Olympic hopeful, Juliane Bray for her outstanding commitment to snowboarding. She has been ranked 20 in the world for the boarder-x discipline is also the current New Zealand Women’s Snowboard Champion.

“Juliane is achieving consistently good results at a World Cup level, including a first. Plus she’s in line for the Olympics if New Zealand wins a spot through the FIS ranking system,” said Davidson.

Bray is also a coach for Cardrona Alpine Resort’s SAS training programme and is well known among up-and-coming riders for her supportive nature, approachability and willingness to share her expertise.

Bray was up against the crème de la crème of New Zealand’s winter sports athletes, the other nominees being Ski Racer of the Year, Nicola Campbell of Dunedin, Speed Skier of the Year, Chris Gebbie of National Park and Freeskier of the Year, Geoff Small from Huntly.

Over 20 years of dedication to the industry were recognised with Cardrona Alpine Resort’s departing marketing manager, Nigel Kerr the recipient of the Contribution to Snowsports Award. During his long association with Cardrona, Kerr had a major impact on the development of all snow sports events above and beyond his marketing role and was instrumental in helping both regional and national organisations achieve their goals, not just at Cardrona but nationwide.

Miles Davidson of the New Zealand Snowsports Council (NZSC) said Kerr’s influence on the industry was exceptional.

“Nigel won because he has been unerring in his devotion to making this industry work. He has set up systems to ensure efficient running of events that have been adopted by ski areas throughout the country. He’s been extremely active in all disciplines – masters events, disabled snow sports, alpine ski racing freeskiing, snowboarding – and has been instrumental in the growth of all these sports in New Zealand.”

The other nominees for the Contribution to Snow Sports Award were Rob Greig, for nearly 10 years service to ski racing in Queenstown, six years as chairman of the Queenstown Alpine Ski Team; Fiona Stevens of Auckland for her work on the Snow Vision Strategy looking at raising funds for competitive snow sports athletes and Volkswagen New Zealand for the continued support through sponsorship of ski racing.

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