Teammates paint a different picture of Aussie moguls star Dale Begg-Smith

MAYBE he’s not such a cold fish after all. Maybe Dale Begg-Smith is not the cool, aloof figure he’s often portrayed as.

MAYBE he’s not such a cold fish after all. Maybe Dale Begg-Smith is not the cool, aloof figure he’s often portrayed as.

He might just even be the ultimate team man.

Talk to the families of Australia’s moguls team in Sochi and you get a completely different impression of the IT mogul and champion mogul skier, who with a gold and silver medal is Australia’s most successful ever Winter Olympian.

“He’s a really a nice person, I gave him a kiss today,” said Debbie Graham, mother of young Aussie moguls star Matt Graham, who will line up alongside Begg-Smith at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park this evening.

“He’s lovely and he’s really helped Matt. He’s been really good to Matt.”

Begg-Smith moved to Australia as a teen to ski and run his business because ski authorities in his Canadian homeland wouldn’t allow the young prodigy to do both.

After claiming the silver medal at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Begg-Smith has been absent from the competitive mogul skiing scene for three of the last four years, running his lucrative business from the Cayman Islands — a Caribbean tax haven.

But Begg-Smith has been back training with the Aussies since the start of this winter season, and has by many accounts been a mentor to his teammates for the best part of a decade now.

“Look, Dale was the inspiration, he was the real turning point for Matt,” Matt Graham’s father Steve says.

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“When Dale won the Torino gold, Matt was only a little kid back then, he was only 11, but he was pretty inspired. He just really put the bit between his teeth and said ‘I want to be the best’.”

The Graham family are your classic case of a typical Aussie family chasing a snowy dream from a beach backdrop.

The family lives in Gosford on the NSW Central Coast. Steve is a Holden dealer who loves a big, comfy V6. Debbie is a high school teacher.

While young Matt and his siblings were growing up, the family made the long drive from Gosford to Jindabyne each Friday night in winter, then back again on Sunday night. Six long hours each way, so Matt Graham could inch his way towards an Olympic dream.

“Matt says that moguls combines skiing down challenging terrain as fast as you can and going off a couple of jumps. He just loves skiing fast and going big off jumps,” Debbie Graham says.

Matt Graham is today one of the top moguls skiers in the world. He finished fourth at the World Championships last year and seventh at the Sochi test event a year ago.

Though he’ll probably be better in four years time, his best run in Sochi could easily be good enough for a medal.

Steve Graham says his son’s coach Steve Desovich was “the best in the business”. But in the background, also guiding him, is Dale Begg-Smith.

“No one really knows how much communication Matt and Dale have had except for Matt and Dale,” Steve Graham says.

“I know they’ve had a lot and Dale has guided Matt and mentored him and helped him, so when it was Matt’s turn, he was ready.

“I think Matt’s pretty ready and I think Dale would want the very, very best for Matt. They’re teammates and 10 years apart. It’s a bit like the master and the apprentice.”

As for how Dale Begg-Smith will perform today, that’s anyone’s guess. The bookies have him at huge odds, but Steve Graham reckons they could be wrong.

“Is Dale foxing and going slow? Or is he just holding back and waiting for it to happen? It’s Dale and you just don’t know. don’t think anybody knows what he’s going to pull out on Monday night except Dale.”