Selected for the NZ Paralympic Team at Milano Cortina 2026 last week, Paralympian #188 Corey Peters MNZM is all set for his fourth Paralympic Games appearance. To mark the achievement, we chat to Corey about his spectacular gold medal performance in Beijing 2022.
Corey Peters overcame a lack of racing because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty of crashes in both training runs to produce “the run of his life” to secure a stunning gold medal in the Men’s Downhill Sitting event at the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games.
The New Plymouth-raised Para alpine skier had claimed silver in the Men’s Giant Slalom Sitting event at the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games and bronze in the Men’s Downhill sitting at the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Games.
However, there was little expectation from Corey that in Beijing 2022 he would finally be on top of the podium.
“For me, it was quite a unique Games because of Covid leading up to Beijing 2022 we didn’t have a lot of competition for two years,” he explains. “Everyone was in the same boat, but I guess that helped alleviate some of the outside pressure you put on yourself and from outside too. It was probably the perfect storm. I didn’t put too much pressure or expectation on myself – it was just a matter of going out and skiing.”
That expectation was stripped back further after Corey crashed out in both pre-event training runs at the National Alpine Ski Centre – leading to understandable self-doubt as he entered the start gate.
“There are always a lot of emotions and a huge amount of adrenaline running through your body (at the start),” said Corey. “You also feel nervousness because we are reaching speeds of 100kph and because of where I crashed in the training runs it made me hyper aware of these two sections. I told myself I had to nail these two sections and commit to getting in the right body position.”
On a sun-drenched day, Corey nailed what he describes as “probably one of the best runs of his life”, recording a time of 1:16.73.
“It was a matter of committing to each turn and giving it my all,” he explains. “Once I got past those two points in training where I crashed, I just needed to bring it home to the finish. The run felt like what athletes would describe as being in the flow state. Even though I was skiing at more than 100kph everything seemed to come at me really slowly, like I had all the time in the world.”
Corey may have moved into provisional gold, but he faced the agonising wait for the rest of the field to complete their race before knowing he had secured his maiden Paralympic gold medal.
“Once I crossed the finish line, I knew it was a good run as I made few mistakes,” he says. “I didn’t take up a lot of real estate and the line was where I needed to be. Until you get to the bottom and see the time you don’t know how good it is, but to be 1.6 seconds up (on the rest of the field) is a long time because usually it is tenths or even hundredths of a second which separate the field. It was incredible to see my name at the top of the leaderboard, but you can’t count your chickens until everyone has come home.”
The wait may have been long, but no skier came within 1.27 seconds of the Kiwi who delivered a spectacular gold medal adding further gloss to New Zealand’s rich Paralympic Winter Games tradition.
