Ron Finneran OAM: Australia's first Winter Paralympian and key to the development of disabled skiing here

Not only was he the first Australian representative ready to tackle the mountains of Ornskoldsvik at the first 1976 Paralympic Winter Games, but he was integral in the evolution of sports for people with a disability in Australia.

Born and raised in Maroubra, Sydney, Mr Finneran first came across skiing during a 1974 trip to Thredbo with a group of friends.

He had polio as a child that affected both legs and his arm, but never let his disability stop him from trying new things, so he hired some oversized boots and skis and skied about 20 metres before falling over.

Luckily there were ski instructors from Austria working at Thredbo at the time who told him stories of war veterans skiing despite having lost limbs during the world wars.

They introduced him to the use of outriggers, which are skis used by para-skiers to assist with balance, turn, control their speed, stop and amplify the direction of turns.

Mr Finneran had to be inventive though and created his own equipment to fit his individual needs.

"It was a process of modification, because I was the one inside this body and I had learnt enough from the professional skiers how to build the equipment to accommodate what I had to do on the mountain," he said.

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His equipment changed over the years and he said even to the day he retired in 2010, he was constantly thinking through how changes and modifications could improve the way he skied.

"Having a disability, you don't get to feel that basic feeling of wind going through your hair or across your face, but when you go on skis you can go top to bottom. It was just a great sensation," he said.

He showed up ready to rumble to Ornskoldsvik, but was disqualified for not fitting into the Paralympics' limited categories at the time for only those who were deaf or blind in the cross-country, and amputees only in the downhill alpine.

The classifications were changed for the subsequent Games of 1980, but he did not go on to compete in the Paralympics after that. However, he played an active role in the advancement of other Paralympians.

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After those first Games Mr Finneran was invited by the Swedish town to do a scholarship at the teacher's college and develop ski equipment for those with a disability. They were particularly interested in his downhill methodology.

He also met his wife, Elisabeth, who was volunteering at the Games, and also studying at the teacher's college.

She helped him develop his local language skills before they returned to Australia in 1978 and started working at Thredbo.

When Mr Finneran wasn't on the mountain teaching or officiating, he was organising disabled ski weeks, by helping people get set up with equipment and instructors.

It was in the pub at the Thredbo Alpine Hotel that the idea for the Australian Disabled Skier's Federation (ADSF) was born, later renamed Disabled WinterSport Australia.

It was an organisation he went on to become the executive director of for 31 years, until his retirement in 2010.

Due to the work of the foundation, ski resorts started to offer concession lift tickets to reduce the costs for people with disabilities, as the costs of getting appropriate transport from metropolitans areas was high.

The scheme snowballed from there into the other ski resorts, with both Perisher and the Victorian ski fields adopting the concession.

"People working at the resorts were given special training to get disabled people on and off lifts and that's the reason why winter sports went so well in this country.

"The resorts accepted it the way it was and organised special clinics at the ski schools so that there were a number of ski instructors specialised to teach people with disabilities," he said.

During the early '80s Mr Finneran said the international movement for disabled skiers "went gangbusters", especially after the Vietnam War which saw the sport pick up in the Unites States due to veteran war injuries.

The calibre of talent only started to build from there and soon Mr Finneran was in charge of scouting great skiers. He was also chef de mission and team manager of the Australian Winter Paralympic teams from 1980 to 1994.

In 1984 the Australian Sports Commission allocated some funds to the organisation to get it on a professional footing and that's when Mr Finneran became an employee of the ADSF, with his main role to develop winter sports in Australia.

By the Paralympic Games of 1984, Ron and his team had built up enough numbers to have teams that were sent to the Games.

Although there were no medals won that year, Australia finally hit gold in 1992 with the first gold medal won by amputee Michael Milton OAM. In '94 another gold medal was won by paraplegic Michal Norton OAM.

As the newly appointed chairman of the bid committee for the 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games, Mr Finneran was a key player in the negotiations made to provide adequate funding for the Paralympic Games, a newly formed pre-requisite for hosting the Olympics.

"Sydney was the first real example of merged Olympics and Paralympics," he said, adding that it wasn't an easy battle as the issue to host both Games became a highly contentious issue.

"Surprisingly they welcome it with open arms now."

After that, the committee encouraged Mr Finnernan to return to scouting great athletes and soon after he played a major role in the establishment of the Jindabyne Winter Academy, a program designed to assist elite and talented able-bodied and disabled alpine skiers.

Finneran's work culminated in 2001, when the Australian Institute of Sport established a Paralympic Alpine Skiing Program, in conjunction with the Australian Paralympic Committee.

He said that competitive skiing in Australia had now reached the point where both able-bodied and disabled skiers train together, a relationship that started between both Winter Games when equipment was shared between coaching staff.

Mr Finneran was inducted in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2005 and in the Australian Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2016.

He has lived in Merimbula since 1984, an interesting local fact being that at one point he had an oyster delivery business where he would transport up to 500 dozen from the Sapphire Coast up into the ski resorts in the mountains. He also took on a management position at Merimbula airport.

Now he sits as chairman of the Sapphire Coast Youth Development Fund, which seeks and gains funding support from small businesses to support the travel costs of young athletes and performers.

That was how he also met Pambula Winter Olympic mogul freestyle skier Cooper Woods, to whom the organisation donated funds when he was still a teen.

He is also a member of Merimbula Rotary and is an active campaigner for the advancement of accessible tourism within the Bega Valley Shire, which he said "has a lot of work to do".

Some suggestions he gave were to build inclusive architecture and make it easier for businesses to use their websites to inform people with disabilities about what their services can and cannot offer to people with mobility challenges.

He wanted to wish all contestants at the Beijing Winter Paralympics success as they approached the Games.