Valentino Guseli in action at Laax in Switzerland. Photo: Tommy Pyatt.
Valentino Guseli grew up with one foot in powder, the other in sand.
His early years were spent moving between Canberra, the Snowy Mountains, and the quiet South Coast village of Dalmeny – the place he and his family would ultimately call home.
It was here, in a town better known for beaches and surf culture than halfpipes and apres-ski, alongside the life of a coastal kid, a world-class snowboarder quietly began to take shape.
Val’s life has always followed a pull toward the mountains, shaped by ancestral roots and a family story reaching from southern Italy to the Snowy Mountains.
Born in the small town of Castelliri at the foot of the Ernici Mountains, his grandfather Guido grew up in a family of seven children.
But winter sports were never part of their lives.
“Castelliri is surrounded by mountains that receive snowfall during winter,” said Tony Guseli, a cousin and family historian, “however, the family did not participate in skiing or snow sports.”
Decades before Olympic start gates, the family’s first encounter with snow came not through sport, but through work.
During the 1950s, members of the Guseli family began making their way from Italy to Cooma.
Two brothers found work on the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme, while another set up as a shoemaker in town.
Tragedy struck in April 1958 when Antonio, one of the brothers, died at just 23.
Accounts say he was among several workers standing on a lift platform above one of the Southern Hemisphere’s deepest shafts when a winch failed, causing them to fall.
Antonio did not live to see his parents and four younger siblings arrive in Australia six months later, including Guido, Valentino’s grandfather, who was 13 at the time.
By the early 1960s the family had moved on to Shepparton but by the late 1980s Guido would return to the NSW South Coast where he and his wife Glenda established a swimming pool business and nursery near Kianga, just north of Dalmeny.
Their son Rick grew up moving between the coast and the mountains.
The Guseli family in Castelliri, Italy in 1954. Source: Antonio Guseli.
“We used to make trips up to Kiandra to fish,” he recalled, “and I’d take a square-mouth shovel, hold on tight, and ride it down the slopes. My dad had us doing that long before snowboarding even existed.”
The sand-to-snow lifestyle stuck and Rick became part of the first Australian generation for whom snowboarding was emerging as a sport.
When he married Kristen Sanders, whose father John was a ski patroller at Perisher, winters in the high country became a family constant.
Valentino was born into that rhythm. Every year of his life, he was on the snow, first on a toboggan, then on a board before he was four.
By seven, his ability was obvious enough that coaches urged the family to test him overseas.
Rick cut back his work and began travelling with his son for months at a time, while Kristen and their daughter Ali stayed home on the coast.
The solution to the cost and disruption of constant travel was, like the shovel decades earlier, homemade.
Guido stepped up and built a jump on Rick’s property near Dalmeny. Then came a larger one. This would eventually evolve to a 50-metre run-in feeding into a 50-metre airbag set on a 36-degree slope; one of the largest airbag snowboard jumps in the world.
It allowed Valentino to train year-round, close to family and to push tricks in a controlled environment. It also changed perceptions of what kind of rider he might become.
The results followed. Valentino made his Olympic debut at Beijing in 2022 at just 16, the youngest member of the Australian team, and has since become a rare all-rounder, competing at the highest level in halfpipe, slopestyle and big air.
He also holds the world record for vertical height on a snowboard jump: 11.53 metres.
At 20, he’s now competing at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, already marking personal milestones with a 10th-place finish in big air earlier this week while preparing to contest the halfpipe tomorrow.
It marks a homecoming of sorts for the family story.
“The Italian Olympics have made him more curious about where we come from,” Antonio told Region. “He’s improving his Italian, asking questions, listening more. It’s brought the story full circle.”
Antonio said that growing up in a large migrant family instilled optimism, resilience and the ability to seize opportunities – traits he believes help to keep Valentino grounded amid international success.
“We’re a big migrant family. You grow up surrounded by cousins of all ages. You learn early that no one is bigger than the group,” he said. “Val’s success belongs to him, but he’s never forgotten where he fits.”
The perfect synchronicity of past and present doesn’t end there.
Valentino Guseli even fashioned his very own halfpipe to practice on. Photo: Kirsty McBain, Facebook.
Last weekend the family were in Cooma for the funeral of a longtime family friend, never expecting Valentino would be called into the big air final at the last minute.
In a symbolic return to the roots of the family’s Australian story, relatives – including his “Nonno” Guido – found themselves watching him compete in the small country town where their family’s journey in Australia first began.
Antonio posted on a local Facebook page, asking if a venue could host an early-morning viewing.
“The response from Cooma was incredible,” he said. “Three venues offered, and we ended up at Rhythm Snowsports, which has a long connection to Valentino. It felt right.”
For the family, the gathering carried deep meaning.
“That town represents where the family really began in Australia,” Antonio said. “To be there, watching Val with Nonno in the room, was a moment that connected generations — emotional and unforgettable.”
Valentino Guseli is considered a strong medal hope in the men’s snowboard halfpipe which gets underway at 5:30 am Thursday AEDT.
