SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - APRIL 18: Australian snowboarder Alex 'Chumpy' Pullin poses during a portrait ... [+]
Historically, Australia has not been considered a snowboarding powerhouse. It’s the lowest continent in the world by average elevation; its highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko at 7,310 feet, is half the height of other continents’ highest points.
However, both recreationally and professionally under governing body Snow Australia, the nation has been establishing itself as a snowboarding contender over the last decade, ever since it began building its national program in earnest for the 2006 Torino Olympics. And much of the groundwork for that success was laid by Alex “Chumpy” Pullin, who died Wednesday morning at 32 after a spearfishing accident on the Gold Coast.
Pullin got a fortuitous start in snowboarding despite growing up in largely mountainless Australia; his parents own a ski hire shop in Mansfield, in the foothills of the Victorian Alps in southeastern Australia. Pullin began snowboarding at age 8, and he quickly homed in on snowboard cross as his chosen discipline, considering it “the most pure form of competition,” as he shared on his website.
“When I started snowboarding, there were many different disciplines I competed in, but Boardercross always felt like it tested all of my snowboard skills,” he wrote.
Pullin competed in his first Winter X Games in 2008 (he would finally earn a medal in his sixth appearance, in 2016), and in 2010 in Vancouver, he represented Australia for the first time at the Olympics.
The nation had sent its largest Olympic contingent to date, 40 athletes, to the 2006 Torino Games, but its snowboarding team failed to earn a podium place in Italy. That would no longer be the case in 2010, with Australian halfpipe snowboarder Torah Bright taking gold in the women’s competition and bringing Australia its first snowboarding medal. The 2010 Games were Australia’s most successful Winter Olympics overall to that point as Dale Begg-Smith and Lydia Lassila rounded out the country’s total medal count at three with their finishes in men’s freestyle moguls skiing and women’s aerial freestyle skiing.
Skiing emerged as Australia’s more dominant discipline at Vancouver 2010, but Pullin had been considered a podium favorite in snowboard cross heading into the Games. That his country is not known for producing winter sports champions did not prevent Pullin from being the fastest qualifier of the 35-man field. But snowboard cross, with its emphasis on one-on-one racing rather than the trick-filled runs seen in freestyle, is an unforgiving discipline, and Pullin crashed in the quarterfinals to finish 17th overall.
Before he became Australia’s flagbearer at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Pullin achieved consistent success at the highest levels on the world stage. Weeks after his off-podium finish in the 2010 Games, he earned his first World Cup gold medal.
Pullin became the first Australian to defend a Snowboarding FIS World Championships title when he won the snowboard cross events in 2011 and 2013, and both his future and that of Australian snowboarding on the world stage were looking bright.
Australia sent its largest-ever team to the 2014 Sochi Games, with 60 athletes competing in ten sports. At Sochi, Pullin once again finished off the podium in the snowboard cross event, but Bright took silver in halfpipe. That Pullin, a snowboarder, was the face of the team was no small honor; to that point, only one of Australia’s nine total Winter Olympic medals had been earned by a snowboarder (Bright’s gold in 2010). And Australia gave Pullin more national funding than any other Olympic athlete competing in Sochi, with $500,000 in support.
In 2018, a snowboarder was once again the Olympic flagbearer for Australia as East Melbourne’s Scotty James took up the mantle. Heading into those Games, Pullin was No. 1 in the world rankings, and he earned his highest Olympic finish in Pyeongchang, sixth place, but lost his chance at a medal when he crashed in the finals. Still, Australia still ended up on the podium in snowboard cross as Jarryd Hughes, then 22, took silver.
Over on the freestyle side, Scotty James, then 23, took bronze in men’s halfpipe, marking the first Games in which Australia had captured multiple medals in snowboarding and also the first time twice over that a male Australian snowboarder had placed on the podium.
The 2018 Games were a watershed moment for Australian snowboarding, even if it shined a spotlight on division within the team when Pullin declined to publicly congratulate Hughes. The dispute dated back to the Sochi Games, when a group of snowboarders including Hughes, Bright and James raised questions about Australia’s perceived preferential funding for Pullin.
Nevertheless, it was clear after Pyeongchang that Australian snowboarding would rise to international prominence—crucially, in both freestyle and boardercross. In 2010 and 2014, Bright was putting Australian halfpipe snowboarding on the map, but in the years between 2010 and 2018, Pullin had been attempting to do the same for boardercross. In that way, Hughes’ victory in 2018 was a victory for Australian boardercross overall—and, by extension, Pullin—even if the two didn’t acknowledge it at the time.
The future of Australian snowboarding is promising. Hughes, now 25, and James, now 26, should be favorites to medal at Beijing 2022. Hughes has consistently finished among the top ten on the World Cup circuit, and James had a nearly two-year undefeated streak from 2018 to early 2020. Cam Bolton, 29, whom Pullin could be seen giving an enthusiastic high-five after the snowboard cross final in 2018, could give Australia another strong chance to podium in snowboard cross 2022, as could 22-year-old Adam Lambert.
And a new crop of halfpipe snowboarders should have expanded opportunities to hone their skills on home soil. Australia’s only halfpipe is located at Perisher Ski Resort. The Olympic Winter Institute has been pushing for an Olympic-standard Superpipe (with 22-foot walls), a cause that James has taken up as well. In order to compete with the world’s best in snowboarding, Aussies will need a regulation-sized pipe to train on at home.
With Australia surging ahead in snowboarding, it’s nothing short of tragic that one of its early stars won’t be able to serve as an ambassador for the sport and a mentor to the next generation. Geoff Lipshut, the chief executive of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia, told Reuters that Pullin had made the decision to retire from snowboarding last month but had yet to announce it. Even if he were out of competition, Pullin’s influence over the sport would have been widely felt. “It is an incredibly sad day,” Lipshut said.
Snow Australia wrote in a statement: “A beloved member of the Australian snow sports team, Chumpy was a role model to many and leader within our tight-knit snow sports community. After a decade on the international stage representing Australia proudly, Chumpy was well known as someone who regularly gave back to the sport he dearly loved.”
Pullin’s former teammates also honored the role he played in growing snowboarding in Australia. “I’m deeply saddened and shocked by the loss of Chumpy, he was a great athlete and ambassador for our sport in Australia and around the world,” James said in an Instagram post.
Hughes also posted a heartfelt tribute to his former teammate.
“Chumpy was a huge part of the Australian Winter team, he was a phenomenal athlete and an even better role model for all up and comers,” Hughes wrote. “He truly paved the way for other snowboarders in Australia and will leave behind an incredible legacy. RIP Chumpy. It was an honour to be teammates and have raced alongside you.”
In the end, Pullin’s legacy wasn’t about Olympic medals or world championships. It instead lay in his unadulterated love for a sport that, against all odds, he managed to pursue as a career, and in the ways he helped snowboarding in Australia progress to the point that the next generation can also pursue it professionally, with access to more robust sponsorships and worldwide acclaim.
