Australia's 'accidental' Winter Olympian

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea - It was by accident that Harley Windsor, Australia's first Aboriginal Winter Olympian, discovered figure skating.

That was a dozen years ago - and he's never looked back.

After his mother took a wrong turn in suburban Sydney, the then curious 8-year-old stumbled across an unlikely sports venue in a country known for its sweltering temperatures: an ice rink.

"I thought it was really cool and liked it," Windsor, now 21, said after a recent performance at the Four Continents championships in Taiwan.

Skating once a week turned into twice a week, and soon he was getting serious.

"For the first few years I didn't think it was going to be a sport that would really stick. I thought I was just doing it for fun," he said, reflecting on his early years.

"Around the time I was 15 is when I started to be like, 'I really like this sport. I'm sort of getting half decent at it'."

A growth spurt in his early teens meant Winsor's height made him better suited to pairs skating, but one problem persisted: a dearth of female skating partners Down Under.

Keen to keep him in the sport, his Russian-born coaches began a search for someone suitable.

They tracked down Moscow-based Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya, who had been overlooked by the Russian system and, after a trial, she agreed to switch countries and received her Australian citizenship last year.

Speaking different languages was no barrier and the pair won the junior world junior championship last season, claiming Australia's first global figure skating title and getting the nod for the Olympics in Pyeongchang.

"On ice we're very business oriented. We both know what we have to do and what we don't have to do," Windsor said of his partnership with 18-year-old Alexandrovskaya.

Off the ice "we've had our ups and downs just like every other pair", he said, but they've learned that time apart can be healthy for their relationship.

"Because you're with them so often you don't want something not working on the ice to carry it off the ice, and affect everything else," he said.

One of seven siblings in a close-knit family, Windsor said he was "the odd one out", with his brothers and sisters preferring more traditional Australian pursuits, like horse riding and soccer.