Watched the movie Cool Runnings on telly the other day. Suppose it's no coincidence, seeing that the Winter Olympics have started. For those that don't know, it's a movie about the Jamaican bobsled team that entered into the 1988 Winter Olympics and somehow managed to qualify, despite the lack of snow back home. It's a very funny movie.

There is always some of the spirit of Cool Runnings about Australian snow sports. I don't mean to disparage us, but when your mountains stop where the mountains in North America and Europe begin, it will always be hard to compete at the highest level. Our snow season is very short, probably three months in a good year.

Medals, any medals have been extremely hard to come by. That's not to say we haven't won some, even gold. At Salt Lake, Alisa Camplin won gold in the knee bustin' women's aerial and did it with pure skill, but that was balanced by Steven Bradbury's last man standing gold in the 1000 m speed skating final, when the four skaters in front of him all fell within sight of the finish line. All in all, Australians have only won four medals in the Winter Olympics till now.

Now we have another Olympic champion, Dale Begg-Smith in the men's mogul. All Australia is celebrating one of its newest citizen's victories. Newest citizen? Yeah, he was a Canadian and we're not giving him back.