By Frances Howe
Michael Milton usually goes to bed about 7pm, before an early morning of setting up racecourses on the mountains of Thredbo. But one winter night, he couldn’t sleep.
“You always have your best ideas when you’re going to sleep,” Milton said.
Three-time cancer survivor and Paralympian Michael Milton is aiming to qualify for his sixth winter Paralympics. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
The idea was to try and qualify for his sixth winter Paralympics, 20 years after his last, at the age of 52.
After collecting the most Paralympic medals of any Australian skier – 11 across five Games, including six gold – Milton left the sport in 2006 and competed in para-cycling at the Beijing Summer Games in 2008. In 2006, he broke the world record for the fastest speed by a one-legged skier and, in 2013, for the fastest marathon completed with crutches.
Though he has retired twice from competitive skiing and recovered from his third cancer diagnosis 43 years after osteosarcoma left him an amputee, Milton is back.
“You go through cancer, you get told about survival rates of what you’re going through,” he said. “Obviously, three cancers, different survival rates for each of those. I believe that the fourth round of cancer for me is more [of a] when, not if. It makes you want to squeeze the marrow out of life. It makes you want to use the time that you’ve got to the fullest.
“You know the idea of skiing down the side of the mountains, and challenging myself, and going fast, and feeling the cold wind on my face, these are things that excite me.”
Milton, who lives in Canberra most of the year, has months to qualify for the 2026 Paralympics in Milan, aiming to submit his times in February. He’s off to a good start, having won two events – slalom and giant slalom – at the national championships last month.
“I’m confident, I believe in myself, I still have a good understanding of the level that’s required and the ability to ski there,” he said. “There’s definitely a physical side of skiing in terms of the athleticism required, the strength … but, at the same time, gravity is on your side and gravity acts on old bodies like it does on young ones.”
As well as what Milton calls “post-cancer fatigue” and recovering from a broken hip last year, raising enough money to fund his qualification is another challenge. His late decision to qualify means he is not in the Paralympics squad and will have to self-fund training, travel and competition expenses.
“I’ve shot myself in the foot in many ways with a very late decision,” he said with a laugh. “Things like qualifying for different funding levels through the sport, that all kind of happened in May, and I wasn’t even thinking about this then.”
But the chance to compete at another Paralympics in front of his children makes it all worthwhile.
“And sure, it’s tough, at the moment,” he said. “I’m relatively early into strength training, sore muscles, trying to go out on a daily basis and do some physical training and then the workload at the moment, which is not only my normal job, but on the hunt for sponsors, planning and looking at international race schedules and what I might do where, and how I might pay for it, is almost a full-time job in itself.”
Still, he’s optimistic.
“The 7500 days of my life I’ve spent on snow stand me in good stead.”