Christchurch website publisher David Scott has donated $10,000 to the Snow Sports New Zealand patrons and friends programme, matching the recent donation by patron Dick Schulze, of the United States.
Scott was a New Zealand representative at the Albertville, Canada, Winter Olympics in 1992, in the demonstration sport of speed skiing.
He has made an individual donation of $5000 and committed another $5000 via his website businesses.
Snow Sports New Zealand chief executive Ross Palmer said yesterday Scott was a strong supporter of snowsports and his gesture was "awesome".
When Scott and other team members represented New Zealand in 1992, they had no support and Scott slept in his car near the resort in the nights leading up to the competition.
"We need to get behind our ski and snowboard athletes if we want to have any hope of competing on the world stage," he said.
In 1995, Scott developed a thesis he wrote for a ski area management course run by the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology into a website industry that now provides up-to-the-minute, impartial snow reports, pictures and news articles.
The SSNZ patrons and friends programme was set up in June this year as a charitable foundation to assist snow sports athletes in all disciplines.
