Ross Milne


Leslie Ross Milne was an alpine ski racer from Australia.
Entered in the men's downhill at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Milne died of a head injury after he lost control during a training run at Patscherkofel and struck a tree at more than 60 miles per hour.
An inquiry held by the organising committee said that he "caught an edge". Hugh Weir reported to the Australian Olympic Federation that
Dr Blaxland said that he was wrong about his age, and that the IOC was wrong to suggest he was inexperienced:
Manager John Wagner said that Milne had found the path ahead of him obscured by contestants congregating because the top part of the downhill course was overcrowded, and tried to slow down "on a spot which was not prepared for stopping or swinging". He argued that the accident might have been prevented by stricter management of the downhill course, which had a hundred racers on it. He also said that "any of the top skiers would probably have been in difficulty in a similar situation".
Following Milne's death and a serious injury to Edmund Schaedler of Liechtenstein, some minor safety improvements were made to the downhill course prior to the race on 30 January.
Milne had learned to ski at Falls Creek ski area in the Australian Alps and had spent the previous winter of 1963 racing in Europe. He was buried in his home town of Myrtleford in Victoria, where his family farmed tobacco.
Milne's younger brother Malcolm competed on the World Cup circuit and in the 1968 and 1972 Winter Olympics. The suggestion that racers from Australia and New Zealand should not compete on downhill courses gave him motivation to prove otherwise. He became the first non-European to win a men's World Cup downhill race in December 1969, held at Val-d'Isère, France. It was also the first World Cup podium by an alpine racer from the southern hemisphere.