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Posted on Thursday September 23rd at 11:01 a.m.
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David Scott under the Olympic flame at the speed ski venue of the 1992 Winter Olympics.
Scott, who lives in Christchurch and is well known throughout the New Zealand snow sports community, has made an individual donation of $5,000, and has also committed to an additional $5,000 via snow.co.nz and nzXsports.com.
"For many years now, David has been a strong supporter of all snow sports," said Snow Sports New Zealand CEO Ross Palmer. "For him to make a personal donation on top of this speaks volumes about his commitment to the industry. It's an awesome gesture."
Scott said it's just one way he can get behind aspiring snow sports athletes.
"From my own experience I know that our aspiring athletes don't have the same level of support provided to athletes in many other countries," said Scott. "I have always thought that a long-term approach is what's required and the Patrons and Friends programme is definitely a step in the right direction."
Scott's primary business, nzXsports.com is the publisher of Snow.co.nz, Surf.co.nz and Swellmap.com. He is well known to many in the snow sports industry, particularly speed skiing aficionados, who remember Scott as a Winter Olympic representative in the Albertville Olympics in 1992.
Speed skiing was a demonstration sport in the Olympics that year, so Scott, and other team members represented New Zealand with no support, sleeping in his car near the resort in the nights leading up to the competition.
"I laugh about it now," said Scott. "But we need to get behind our ski and snowboard athletes if we want to have any hope of competing on the world stage."
David Scott presenting the Ski Area Service Award at the New Zealand Snow Sports Awards earlier this year.
The snow.co.nz and surf.co.nz websites are all at the cutting edge of their field in respect to the information supplied, design and interaction with the snow, surf and marine weather industry and public. Scott and the team at Snow.co.nz have achieved numerous New Zealand Internet milestone including; snow reports to the web in 1996, Video on demand in 1998, the use of webcams in 1999, also in 1999 automatically generated TV snow reports were used by Prime, TV3 & CTV. In 2004 Snowco launched the Mayhem Tour which, for two years consisted of the Internet Blogging of Sam Masters, Andy Sharem & Nigel McKissock while they toured New Zealand filming for a show which was broadcast on SkyTV.
This pre-dated social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by two years. Milestones continued with a world first of streaming live to the web AND Vodafone handsets the Burton Open in 1996, the introduction of the snow and surf sites optimized for smart handheld devices and, in 1997 in collaboration with MetOcean producing the first ski and board area specific snow and weather forecast.
"As broadband saturation and the internet reach further into people's homes and businesses, we at nzXsports.com are committed to supplying cutting edge surfing and snow sports events footage and delivering conditions as they happen" said Scott.
The Snow.co concept was developed from Scott's thesis for the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology Ski Area Management Course in 1995. Since then the site has moved from being a static industry website to providing up to the minute and impartial snow reports, cameras and news articles. The site has received huge acclaim, including awards from Netguide and TUUANZ.
The SSNZ Patrons & Friends programme was set up in June 2010 to drive donations into an established charitable foundation. The goal is to build a sustainable capital base, utilizing interest and income from investment to help diversify funding for aspiring snow sports athletes and programmes across all disciplines.