Paralympic officials must ensure that future Winter Games locations provide alpine skiers with a fair competition - something that wasn't seen in Sochi, says Australia's injured flagbearer, Cameron Rahles-Rahbula.
Rahles-Rahbula, a one legged-skier who does not use a prosthetic when competing, was ruled out of his fourth Games after he crashed in training for the downhill on the slopes of Rosa Khutor and injured his knee and ankle.
He has since watched fellow one-legged competitors, including Australia's super-combined bronze medal winner Toby Kane, struggle in the testing conditions, especially on the Super-G course on the first weekend of competition.
The location near the Black Sea, and time of year, have been routinely criticised, and the competition began with the high-risk events of downhill and Super-G being run on soft snow that rapidly deteriorated in warm conditions.
By the time the sit-skiers had their runs after the vision-impaired and standing classifications, the courses were treacherous, with half the competitors not finishing and several being taken to hospital after horrific crashes. A cold snap that brought snow for one day midway through the competition improved conditions slightly for the technical races.
Rahles-Rahbula said the conditions were just too difficult for the one-legged skiers to compete against those that use prosthetics or have an upper-limb impairment. There are three classes of Alpine skiers: vision impaired, sitting and standing, within which a competitor's level of disability is factored into their times so they can be measured against each other.
"There are probably some very good athletes who are enhanced by these challenging conditions and that's probably not the one-legged class," he said.
"These conditions aren't the 'bomb' and this isn't usually what we like to race in. You ask any other alpine athlete, particularly the sit-skiers, they're all on an equal playing field, but it hasn't been the best demonstration of skiing, just purely because of the time of year and the type of snow and the weather that's been provided. This isn't the norm.
"When it comes to the Games, you'd want to at least try and make sure that the hill is more than likely going to produce some good conditions to ski on, and I think the location at Sochi was always going to be a challenge at this time of year."
Australia has not achieved the results it had been expecting from these Games. Going into the final two races - the men's and women's giant slalom - Australia's only medal was a bronze for Kane in the super-combined.
"We always said coming into these Games that with the type of snow's that here and the type of athlete that we've got, that we're unfortunately susceptible to unpredictability," said Rahles-Rahbula, who will be retiring after the closing ceremony on Monday morning (Australian time).
"We aimed for six medals but there was also the idea that we could ski very well and come back with zero.
"There's been some good skiing in there. There just seem to be a lot of hiccups that have got a bit in the way of the team, but I think morale of the team has been really good.
"I can understand that from a management point of view, obviously success is measured by the amount of medals that are brought home. In winter sports, unlike a lot of the summer Games, there are not as many medals up for grabs and there's far greater unpredictability.
"A lot of the top teams like Russia have poured a lot of their money into their programs over the last few years and that really shows in the medal count.
"Obviously you've got to find the right athlete ... and Australia does tends to have a bit more of an up-and-down consistency because we're obviously not a skiing nation. From a funding point of view, I think it's critical that we do try and maintain that, because if we drop off then we're really gong to be behind the eight ball."
