Melissa Perrine

Melissa Perrine

Perrine in December 2012
Personal information
Nationality	Australia
Born	(1988-02-21) 21 February 1988
Sport
Country	Australia
Sport	Para-alpine skiing
Event(s)	Downhill Super-G Giant Slalom Slalom Super Combined
Achievements and titles
Paralympic finals	2010 Winter Paralympics

Melissa Perrine (born 21 February 1988) is a B2 classified visually impaired para-alpine skier from Australia. Since 2009, she has used Andy Bor as her guide. Coming off an injury that only saw her return to skiing at the last World Cup event of the season, she competed at the 2010 Winter Paralympics in the downhill, Super-G, Super Combined and Giant Slalom events where she did not medal. She continued to ski at events in 2011 and 2012.

Personal

Perrine was born on 21 February 1988^[1] and is from Welby, New South Wales.^[2][3] In 2007, the Wingercarribee Council area named her their Young Australian of the Year.^[4] She was a student in 2010.^[2] She was featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's X Paralympic Games in March 2010.^[2]

Perrine has a vision impairment, with her eyesight slowly deteriorating since she was very young.^[5] Her vision is limited to blurry shapes and colours.^[6]

Skiing

Melissa Perrine interview conducted for Wikinews

Perrine is a B2 classified visually impaired skier from Australia.^[5][7] She gets direction on the course from a guide who uses a microphone and speakers to communicate with her on the course.^[5]

Perrine first skied with her guide Andy Bor in 2009 in competition at the IPC North America Cup in Colorado, where she finished second in the Super-G.^[1] She was officially named to the Australian 2010 Winter Paralympics team in November 2009.^[8] Alongside Jessica Gallagher, she was one of two women named to the team. It was the only the second time Australia sent women to the Winter Paralympics.^[8] A ceremony was held in Canberra with Australian Paralympic Committee president Greg Hartung and Minister for Sport Kate Ellis making the announcement.^[9] At a 2010 World Cup event in Italy ahead of the Paralympics, Perrine fractured her the ischium bone in her hip as a result of a fall. She returned to Australia and was treated at the NSW Institute of Sport by chief physiotherapist Corey Cunningham.^[5] She returned to the slopes by the end of the 2009/2010 skiing season where she competed in the 2010 World Cup in Aspen, Colorado. She earned a silver medal and a pair of bronze medals at the event.^[5]

Perrine and the rest of Australia's para-alpine team arrived in the Paralympic village on 9 March 2010 for the 2010 Winter Paralympics.^[10] While at the Games, she competed in the downhill, Super-G, Super Combined and Giant Slalom events at the 2010 Winter Paralympics.^[4][11] She finished seventh in the visually impaired Super-G,^[12] approximately 12.54 seconds behind gold medal winning Slovak skier Henrieta Farkasova. Her poor performance was because she was not following her guide like she should have,^[13] She did not finish in the Super Combined.^[12] Following her first run in the giant slalom, she was in sixth place but she did not finish her second run and did not place.^[14] She and Bor finished fifth in the 2,139 metres (7,018 ft) long downhill course.^[15] The 2010 Games were her first.^[2]

At the 2011 IPC World Championship, with Bor as her guide, Perrine won a silver in the vision-impaired downhill event, the first one ever earned by an Australian woman at the event.^[16][17][18] She also earned a pair of bronze medals in the women’s vision impaired Super Combined and Super G events.^[18] At an August 2011 competition in Mt Hutt, New Zealand, she finished first in the Women's Super G Visually Impaired Race.^[19] At the Winter Games IPC event at Coronet Peak that same month, she and Bor finished first in the women's slalom visually impaired event with a time of 1:58.63, about 50 seconds faster than the event's silver medalist Jae Rim Yang skier and Ko Woon Chung guide.^[6][20][21] At 2012 World Cup event in Italy, she finished third in the slalom while skiing with Bor. For her two runs, she had a combined time of 2:11.03, less than a second behind the silver medal finishing Danielle Umstead.^[22] She won a silver medal in the giant slalom, with a combined run time of 2:28.13, ten seconds behind the gold medalist.^[23]

References