Queenstown's annual Gay Ski Week is now on the verge to become the subject of a University of Otago. It is considered that the Gay Ski Week could help advance sex research and also could help to study gay men's sexual behavior during major overseas sporting and social event.

The Auckland based Department of Preventive and Social Medicine of the university, headed by Dr Peter Saxton with his fellow researchers has moved on to conduct the study entitles "Sun, Snow, Sport, Sex" with the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society and Melbourne's La Trobe University in association with the New Zealand Aids Foundation.

The primary focus of the study remains the fatal disease HIV and the resurgence of syphilis among gay populations in major Western cities that include Sydney and Melbourne. Though Gay Ski Week New Zealand 2011 (GSWNZ) has been seen as a research platform but also at the same time to make the study relevant the valuable data was gathered from more than 450 gay men who took part in the study at the second Asia Pacific Outgames held in Wellington in March.

Dr Saxton said the anonymous, confidential study would "directly inform HIV prevention work in a range of major gay events in Australia and New Zealand and will demonstrate the feasibility and utility of research on situational risk at major gay events."