Imagine telling Sally Pearson, Leisel Jones or Anna Meares they couldn’t compete in an Olympic final.
Well, now you know how Wollongong’s Jack Millar feels.
Millar was in Innsbruck in Austria late last month, ready to compete in the Winter Youth Olympics, a tournament he had spent months preparing for.
He had qualified for the ski cross final after finishing 13th in the preliminary rounds and was adamant he would be a force in the medal stages.
But then, the unthinkable happened.
At least it was unthinkable to the competitors, who had put everything into training and qualifying for the final of their pet event on the biggest stage of their lives.
It was cancelled.
Not postponed, not delayed - cancelled.
It’s even more ironic when you consider the reason hundreds of competitors from around the globe had descended on Innsbruck was the same reason for the cancellation - snow.
And plenty of it.
‘‘Roughly in two days there was probably two metres of snow,’’ Millar said of his experience, and eventual disappointment.
‘‘The roads to get to the hill [at the Austrian resort of Kauchi] were closed. There were gale-force winds. It was basically the worst of the worst in terms of snow conditions.’’
Three weeks on, having jetted back to Australia, you could be forgiven for thinking Millar’s priority list would be topped by lacing on the skis and righting a few wrongs.
Not so.
Those skis will now gather dust as he buries himself in his school books in preparation for this year’s Higher School Certificate.
‘‘This only happens once and I’ve got plenty of years to keep skiing,’’ the level-headed Millar, 16, said.
‘‘I’ve just got to focus on my school work this year. I’ll go up a few times to make sure my legs are still OK and into skiing.
‘‘I’m going to focus on my HSC and my mark and hopefully at the end of the year during summer here I can go back overseas and get a few months on snow.’’
The Illawarra Grammar School student has designs on embarking on one of two very different career paths - either as a pilot or physiotherapist - hence his willingness to put his skiing ambitions on the backburner for now.
It’s the type of ambition which led Millar to the ski fields in the first place.
Despite spending the majority of his weekends during the Australian summer at the beach and living within a short stroll of the sea, the teenager has spent most winters trekking backwards and forwards from Jindabyne.
Not bad, considering he first laced on a ski at the age of three.
‘‘It was thanks to my grandma that I actually got into it because she owns a [holiday] house in Jindabyne,’’ Millar said.
‘‘She took me up there, I had a few weekends in the Milo kids and I got a great idea of what skiing was and I just loved it from the get-go.’’
Millar’s alpine background was cast to one side last year in an attempt to make his mark in ski cross, which he described as ‘‘BMX on snow’’.
‘‘Obviously you’ve got rules and you’re not allowed to push and shove with severe aggression, but you can still cut people off, bump and whatever else,’’ he said.
‘‘If it’s a tight race, especially, the spectators love it and there’s always some big stacks.’’
Marching in an opening ceremony among a team of just 13 Australian athletes in front of 25,000 spectators has given Millar a taste of the big time.
But the Winter Youth Olympics hasn’t been something on his agenda for years on end.
‘‘That’s the weird thing, actually,’’ he said. ‘‘I only found out about it last ski season.
‘‘I’ve always been training and hopefully working towards something, but I guess the opportunity of what I’m working towards never really showed itself until this year.
‘‘That’s why it was great when this opportunity came up.
‘‘I got to work through the whole season aspiring to get to that and when I finally got to the race at Hotham, I got to try my best and ended up first in my age in Australia and qualifying through.’’
Having just dipped his toes on the world stage, Millar is already planning for more.
Higher study in the United States beckons where he could take advantage of a ski scholarship, while the senior Winter Olympics remains a long-term goal.
Only next time Millar hopes he can complete unfinished business.
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