The Australian Paralympic team escaped the fate of being the first medalless winter team in 26 years with two bronze medals in the final three days but it failed in its mission to win a gold medal in Sochi.
The Australian team will leave Russia on Monday with a tally that Australian Paralympic Committee chief executive Jason Hellwig described as the "bottom end" that was targeted in Sochi.
"We wanted to win between two and five," Hellwig said.
"But there were two of the most rewarding medals I've ever been involved in. It's great."
The team was under pressure for most of the competition after mistakes, crashes, a disqualification, bad luck and just not being quick enough cost it chances in events that it had expected to win a medal.
However, bronze medals to Toby Kane in the super-combined (standing) and Jess Gallagher in the giant slalom (vision impaired) during the final three days of competition took Australia to 15th position on the medals table with Russia topping the count with a remarkable record total of 80 medals, which included 30 gold, and the Ukraine the second with the second-highest tally of 25 medals (five golds).
The Australian team will now going through a period of rebuilding with the retirements of Cameron Rahles-Rahbula and Toby Kane, and uncertainty over the future of Mitchell Gourley.
"We really need to focus on having good-quality athletes who are robust and have financial support to get overseas. It's not like living in Austria, Sweden or Germany where you can do this on the weekend and after work," said Chris Nunn, Australia's chef de mission in Sochi.
"We don't have snow for most of the year so it's a massive commitment. You don't have another job when you're a ski racer and that's something we've got to really seriously consider how many people we can take overseas to develop."
"... The skiers [on the current team] are still very young so we've got a basis there from even within this current team that we can work with to go forward but we need to inject more talent and more athletes."
Nunn said the APC would continue to look into the crossover Paralympic track and field athletes into winter sports. Gallagher competed in long jump and javelin at the London Paralympics while Joany Badenhorst, who could not compete in the snowboard-cross after she dislocated her knee in the warm-up, represented South Africa nationally in track and field.
"We've noticed here that there are athletes that are wheelchair track and road athletes who've come here and won medals over shorter distances so it's not so much the technique involved in the skiing, it's about the ability to get the job done with the right-sized motor," Nunn said.
Nunn said he believed snowboard-cross, which was introduced into the Paralympic Games at Sochi, was one sport that would take off, with 14-year-old Ben Tudhope, who was the youngest competitor at the Games but impressed with his 10th placing, being the face of the sport.
"We know that every time a new sport turns up at a Paralympic Games, the following four years goes nuts," Nunn said.
"It is a sexy sport that's different to alpine skiing. You turn up, there's music blaring, there's a whole new world out there and kids are going to be attracted to it.
"We see the number of kids who are snowboarding in Australian and we find a few more Bennys and we're away.
"That's going to be the easy bit of what we do, particularly with having Benny there promoting the sport. We couldn't have a better ambassador for the sport right now and so people will want to come and take up snowboarding because of Ben Tudhope. I know that for fact."
