By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – With big hair and big air, rising Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli will aim to stick the landing on top of the podium at the 2026 Winter Games and give a shout-out to family in fluent Italian.
Guseli is eyeing his second Olympics at Milano-Cortina after finishing sixth in the halfpipe final at Beijing as a 16-year-old wunderkind.
Even with no fans and hardcore COVID-19 restrictions, Beijing was a blast for Guseli as he upstaged seasoned rivals and watched his Australian idol Scotty James take the halfpipe silver four years after his Pyeongchang bronze.
Milano-Cortina, however, promises to be on another level for Guseli, who is Italian on his father’s side and loves the country.
“I’m looking forward to it. I spent a lot of time training over there when I was younger,” Guseli told Reuters in Melbourne.
“I did my first triple jump there. Super good food, super nice people.”
Guseli has been working on his Italian with the help of his grandparents who live near the family home in Dalmeny, a beach town on the South Coast of New South Wales state.
He has time on his hands to master the language while recovering from a serious knee injury.
He hurt himself in a fall during qualifying at the Shougang Big Air event in China last December and posted on social media: “ACL gone. Seeyas in a bit.”
It can take a year to recover from ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries, a timeline which would leave Guseli scrambling to be ready for the men’s big air, the first snowboarding event, that starts a day before the Games’ opening ceremony on February 6.
Guseli hopes to qualify in the triad of snowboarding freestyle disciplines – halfpipe, slopestyle and big air – but will make a final decision on his Olympic programme later.
In the meantime, he is taking rehab in his stride.
“I’ve been through enough rehabs and I don’t really find them that challenging,” said Guseli.
“You just focus on doing the right things and hopefully I’ll be back shredding again as soon as possible.”
BREAKING RECORDS
Broken bones and snapped ligaments go hand-in-hand with freestyle snowboarding as professional athletes pull off absurdly complex tricks to maximise points in competition.
Guseli began learning tricks at a tender age on a home-made, 10-metre ramp that his dad built on their property. He later trained under a specialist freestyle coach in the United States.
On the day before his 16th birthday, he stunned the snowboarding world by crushing American icon Shaun White’s 11-year-old world record for the highest air out of a halfpipe with a 7.30-metre launch at the Laax resort in Switzerland.
He broke another longstanding world record last April when he flew to a height of 11.50 metres off a hip jump in the same country.
Unmistakeable with his big mop of curly hair, Guseli has been racking up trophies since the 2022 Beijing Games, claiming World Cup wins and a halfpipe silver medal at the 2023 World Championships in Georgia.
A month before Georgia, he became the first snowboarder to claim World Cup medals in all three park and pipe disciplines in the same season.
“Since the Olympics, it’s all been on the up,” said Guseli.
“I’ve got a few wins under my belt, learned a lot and got some experience over the years.
“Now I’m just looking forward to getting back on my board, getting to the Olympics and conquering.”
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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