The ABOM Moguls Celebrates 21 Years
Nick Cleaver competing in the 1991 ABOM Mogul Challenge on Wood Run, executing a Cosack jump.
Nick became the youngest ever winner of the event at 16 years and three month of age at the 1991 event, and started an amazing run of five straight victories, which is still the most won by any athlete.
Photo: Mark Ashkanasy
EXHIBITION OPEN DAILY Winter Hours 1-4pm Daily (subject to staff availability)
The Exhibition celebrating 21 years of the ABOM Mogul challenge was curated by Mark Ashkanasy and Team Buller. The show features two decades of the events Posters and photographic images of key moments. A DVD Documentary featuring Team Buller Managers past and present including Geof Lipshut, Michael Kennedy and Andrew Pattison, with additional comments from Adrian Costa, Michael Hughes, Zoe Gabor and Nicole Lewis. Some insightful thoughts from Mark Ashkanasy round off the presentation.
This is a must see exhibition that will engage visitors and improve their understanding of the freestyle skiing world at Mt Buller.
At left: Geoff Lipshut (CEO Olympic Winter Institute of Australia, and Founding Member of Team Buller), Mark Ashkanasy (1990’s Team Buller Photographer and ABOM 21 Exhibition Curator), Michael Kennedy (Team Buller Manager and Skier 1990-2004), and Andrew Pattison (Team Buller Manager 2005-Current)
Extract from our book: Mt Buller, The Story of a Mountain by Jim Darby.
It first ran in 1989 and has run every season since, making the Abom Mogul Challenge Australia’s longest running bump-skiing event. Its male winners are a who’s who of Australian freestyle skiing, including Martin Rowley, Nick Cleaver, Adrian Costa, Tom Costa, Nick Fisher and the 2006 Olympic gold medallist, Dale Begg-Smith. Women’s winners have included Maria Despas, Jane Sexton, Manuela Berchtold and Allie Blackwell.
In 1992, Kirstie Marshall fell across the line with an injured knee. ‘I decided to get into mogul skiing in 1992 so I competed and won all the mogul competitions in Australia with the aim of representing Australia in mogul skiing and aerial skiing, which is something that Nick Cleaver, who was also of my era, was looking to do – he was an exceptional talent in both,’ Marshall said. ‘Unfortunately for me, in the last competition of the season, the Abom, I fell, blew my knee out and crossed the finish line without my skis but actually won the competition. I was out of the sport for 18 months and never entertained the thought of going back to mogul skiing.
’Despite those setbacks, the ABOM has been a trail blazer for international freestyle competition. In 1998, a poor snow year, Michael Kennedy, then the head Team Buller coach and Australian mogul and aerial team manager, came up with the idea of running a dual mogul short course competition. The snow they used was almost all that was left on the mountain, including some leftovers from road clearing which they used to build a kicker, or jump, at the top of the in-run to the World Cup aerials jump. The short course moguls then ran down the in-run. ‘It was amazing,’ Geoff Lipshut said. ‘They raced to the jump and then they could do whatever they liked – inverts, flips, whatever [these manoeuvres were banned at the time in World Cup and Olympic mogul events]. ‘He was just so far ahead of his time; if you look at a moguls event today, it’s exactly what Kenno created in 1998,’ Lipshut said.
