Beefed-up Aussie skier Mitch Gourley set for Sochi Paralympics

WINTER Paralympian Mitch Gourley has been eating six meals a day to match it with the world’s fastest skiers in Sochi.

Mitch Gourley has hit the gym and the fridge in a bid to match it with the world’s best P

MITCH Gourley is Australia’s pocket-rocket winter Paralympian who has been eating six meals a day and living in the gym to match the world’s fastest alpine skiers in Sochi this week.

The 22-year-old from Barwon Heads in Victoria is one of Australia’s leading medal hopes where at 63kg he’ll be 6kg heavier than when he made his Games debut in Vancouver in 2010.

Standing just 166cm doesn’t help his cause to match the biggest and strongest alpine skiers in the world, but Gourley compensates by eating meals in-between meals and even had a sponsorship deal with Cadbury at one stage.

But it’s his heavy lifting in the gym based on a similar program to Australia’s track cyclists, and skiing with able-bodied athletes, which has the left-arm below elbow congenital amputee confident of a strong showing in the slalom and giant slalom in Russia.

“A lot of power work, heavy lifting and strength-based squads and leg press,” he told News Limited during competition in Thredbo.

“I’ve made some huge gains in that area of my training in the last three years and it probably came off the work I did with the able bodied guys because I wasn’t strong enough to keep up.

“That gave me a wake up call of what it took and what some of those guys were doing.”

Gourley also changed his weights coach at the end of 2012 because in his sport — speed and weight is everything.

“I’m close to 20 or 30kg lighter than a lot of my competition, which in tech (technical) is not a huge problem but in speed it has caused me some issues before because of simple gravity and momentum,” he said.

“When we run into flat courses I can have trouble particularly if they’re not all that technical.

“I wanted a fresh approach because after five years you can run out of ideas particularly with one arm where you’re already limited in what you can do.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel but we bounce ideas off Ben (coach) who takes care of the track cyclists at the VIS and it’s a really collaborative process in there.”

Gourley, who is studying to finish a commerce degree and lists Cadel Evans winning the 2011 Tour de France as his greatest sporting moment, learnt to ski as a child at Mount Buller.

He played footy for Newton and Chilwell, his school and Portarlington before alpine skiing took over.

He made the national development team when he was 15, competed in world cups and became the youngest member of Australia’s Vancouver team in 2010 at the age of 18.

Gourley said he learnt a lot, including not to let his body drop its guard when he gets to Sochi.

“I actually got sick when I got there (Vancouver), which apparently is fairly regular for that to happen,” he said.

“When you’re young and trying to get to your first Games, everything is geared towards that and you get to the village and you don’t drop your bundle, but my body almost switched off because I thought, ‘oh, we’ve made it’, when it’s actually the start.

“In the last four years I’ve done a lot of work with able-bodied guys, on my own and the national team, which has strengthened my ability to cope with certain situations.”

That involved spending a year at Thredbo training with Vancouver Olympian Jono Brauer.

“Jumping in and training in a team with able-bodied guys, I’m only missing an arm (but) have two legs and I can take it up to particularly a lot of the Australian guys.

“And it becomes a really productive training environment because they push me a lot and it’s tough to keep up but I can at least almost hold my own and be competitive.”

The 2014 Paralympic Winter Games will be held in Sochi, Russia, from March 7-16.