Australia at the 2002 Winter Olympics Australia at the 2002 Winter Olympics Australia competed at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, winning its first two gold medals in the Winter Games. It was the nation's best performance at the Winter Games prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Australia's first ever Winter Olympic gold, also the first such medal won by a competitor from any Southern Hemisphere country and semitropical nation was won by Steven Bradbury in the 1000 m short track speed skating. Well off the pace of the medal favourites, Bradbury was positioned at the rear in the
Winter Olympic Games not enough snow to hold all the events until mid-January. Sonja Henie defended her Olympic title, and Eddie Eagan of the United States, who had been an Olympic champion in boxing in 1920, won the gold medal in the men's bobsleigh event to become the first, and so far only, Olympian to have won gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. The German towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen joined to organise the 1936 edition of the Winter Games, held on 6–16 February. This was the last time the Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same country