Early Life & Sporting Career
Marshall was born in Melbourne on 21/04/69 and grew up in Black Rock, Victoria with parents, Ron and Anne, older sister, Sascha and younger brother, Carey. She attended Black Rock Primary school (Prep - Yr 6), then Mentone Girls High School (now Mentone Secondary College) before transferring to Firbank Girls' Grammar School in Yr 9. She moved to Taylors College for Yr 12.
Marshall, along with her siblings, started skiing from the age of 4 at the Mount Baw Baw ski resort in Victoria, Australia. In 1981 the family became regular skiers at the Mount Buller ski resort, one of the largest ski resorts in Victoria. In 1987 she joined Team Buller, a Freestyle ski team run by Geoff Lipshut, Peter Braun, Eyal Talmore, Tim Skate and David Freedman based on Mount Buller.
The creation of a skier-exchange program for Freestyle Aerialists saw three Japanese skiers spend the 1987 winter in Mount Buller one of whom, Takayo Yokoyama, was nearing the end of his career and was interested in becoming an International coach. With little prospects in his native country, the chance meeting in Australia saw Marshall being offered a four month scholarship in Inawashiro, Listel Ski Fantasia, the center for Freestyle Skiing in Japan, with Takayo as her coach.
Following the 1988 Australian Freeslyle competition where she placed first, Marshall decided to follow the European winter and compete on the four month long World Cup Season. Sponsored by a Melbourne based travel company, she headed overseas as the only Australian representative in either Aerials, Moguls or Ballet (Acrobatics).
Whilst not truly competitive with her single back layout and single front tuck, she completed her rookie season finishing in 10th position, at that time the highest placing by an Australian winter athlete, male or female, in any winter sport. In 1990 Marshall won her first World Cup event. In 1992, she was crowned World Champion, with six World Cup victories. She was Australia’s flag bearer at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, where she was placed sixth in the women’s aerial skiing event – the nation’s best Olympic result at the time. She also competed in the Winter Olympics at Nagano in 1998. Marshall set several world records over the course of her skiing career, including becoming the first woman in history to score over 100 points on a single competition jump, with a score of 104.37. Her 17th career World Cup gold medal in 1998 tied her for the all time record for career World Cup aerial victories with Cannadian skier Marie Claude Asselin, who retired in 1984.
Marshall discovered current Australian aerial skier, David Morris, while attending a gymnastics display at his local club, which is within her electorate of Forest Hill.
Read more about this topic: Kirstie Marshall
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life, sporting and/or career:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“I taught school in the early days of my manhood and I think I know something about mothers. There is a thread of aspiration that runs strong in them. It is the fiber that has formed the most unselfish creatures who inhabit this earth. They want three things only; for their children to be fed, to be healthy, and to make the most of themselves.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)