Alpine Skier Michael Milton Elevated to Legend of Sport in Australian Hall of Fame
Mountainwatch |News
The Sport Australia Hall of Fame has announced that Michael Milton, OAM, Australia’s most successful Paralympic Winter Games athlete, along with squash champion Geoff Hunt, are the recipients of Australia’s highest sporting honour this year.
The revered pair are just the 50th and 51st Legends since 1993, joining inaugural trio Sir Donald Bradman AC, Dawn Fraser AC MBE and Sir Hubert Opperman OBE, and more recent recipients including Cathy Freeman OAM, Shane Warne AO and Ian Thorpe AM.
“Our two Legends Michael Milton and Geoff Hunt have represented Australia magnificently and left a profound legacy in the history of sport,’’ said Sport Australia Hall of Fame Selection Committee Chair, Bruce McAvaney OAM.
“Michael knocked down so many barriers. His is an extraordinary story, it’s breathtaking. His courage and audacity have resulted in achievements that are hard to comprehend,” McAvaney added.
Milton was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame as an athlete member in 2014 and said being elevated to legend status was a huge honour and one that he will treasure.
““You look through the list of names and struggle to compare your own name and achievements, but I guess the good part of that is that I’m not the judge and so I don’t have to decide whether I’m worthy or not,” Michael said. “I feel very comfortable leaving
that to others.”
“Not long after that I started flicking through the list, going ‘Oh, OK, are there any Winter athletes here? Ooh, no. That makes me the first. That’s very cool. Are there any Paralympians on here? Yes, Louise [Sauvage] is here. So, I can be the second.”
Michael’s achievements are extraordinary, the alpine skier competing in five Paralympics, the first in the 1988 games in Innsbruck Austria, when he was just 14 and winning 11 paralympic medals medals – six gold, three silver and two bronze.
He was Australia’s first Winter Paralympics/Olympics when he won the slalom in Albertville France in 1992. He won gold again in 1994 at the Lillehammer games in Norway but in the 2002 games in Salt Lake City, USA, Michael was unstoppable, winning gold in all four titles in slalom, giant slalom, Super G and Downhill.
Milton had also excelled at the IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships, winning a total of six gold medals between 1996 and 2004.
He then retired from ski racing, but added an exclamation mark in 2006 when he set a speed skiing record of 213.65kph, the fastest ever by an Australian and a world record for a person with a disability.
Milton had also excelled at the IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships, winning a total of six gold medals between 1996 and 2004. He was also named the 2002 Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability among many other national and international awards.
After overcoming oesophageal cancer, Milton then turned to cycling, completing his Paralympics career at the summer games, his sixth Paralympic Games, in 2008.
Michael has battled cancer three times during his life. His left leg was amputated due to osteosarcoma when he was just none years old. In 2007, he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, for which there is a five-year survival rate of just 20 per cent. Last November, cancer was detected for a third time, as Milton had surgery to remove a tumour from his bowel.
Michael’s never been one to let his disability slow him down, pun intended, and he has also represented Australia at two World Paratriathlon Championships, completed an ultra-marathon on crutches, climbed Mt Kilimanjaro and twice walked the Kokoda Track.
Michael grew up in Canberra and Thredbo has been his home mountain since he was a kid. He still rips and is a Thredbo Ambassador and works on Thredbo’s race department each winter.
“A lot of the Legends on the list are, sadly, no longer with us. As a three-time cancer survivor, I’m just happy this isn’t a posthumous award,” Milton said.
Asked how being elevated as a Legend amplified his earlier recognition as an Inductee, Milton said: “I guess I’m a little bit older and fatter and slower than I used to be, so certainly it’s a nice reminder and takes me back to my previous life as a professional athlete, and I guess I’m more distant from that than last time. Last time I was still kind of ‘amongst it’.
“Is it a different honour? Yes, absolutely. So being inducted to a Sports Hall of Fame, especially SAHOF, is amazing and wonderful, but taking the next step to a Legend is a big step in terms of who they judge to be worthy and how you look back at your own career, and gauging how others might see it.’’
