Australia’s mogul skiers are some of the best in the world with high hopes from the team for some Beijing Winter Olympic bling.
They’ve landed in Beijing and spent time today trialling the mogul course in China at Genting Resort Secret Garden. While the course uses man-made snow, they enjoyed a training session with natural snow falling on the Genting Snow Park.
The result? Happy skiers.
Australia’s mogul medal hopes have given the Beijing Olympic course the thumbs up after completing their first training run, describing it as a “dream course”.
Jakara Anthony, Matt Graham and four-time Olympian Britt Cox lead an eight-strong moguls team that has a realistic chance of securing two Olympic medals.
Graham won silver at the last Games in 2018 in Pyeongchang while Anthony enters the Olympics ranked third in the world after claiming eight podiums this season.
“It was incredibly exciting to get on the course last night and have our first training session,” Cox, 27, said on Monday.
“I was amazed at the training facility – the course was impeccable and it was basically a dream course to ski.
“It was a little bit of a surprise that it was snowing last night – it kind of came out of nowhere in the afternoon. It meant that there was a bit of fresh snow on the course which is always a lot of fun for us as mogul skiers, to have something to soften the moguls, so really happy with how the first training session went.”
The Australians are preparing for first round of Games moguls qualification on Thursday night, with the medal rounds on Saturday (men) and Sunday (women).
Anthony finished fourth in Pyeongchang in what was a career-best performance but the 23-year-old from Victoria has since consistently stamped herself as one of the world’s best.
She also liked her first taste of the Beijing mountain.
“The moguls are really fun to ski, the jumps are really nice and I was able to get up to full degree of difficulty with my jumps and had a really fun time doing it,” Anthony said.
“The snow that came down just added to the experience – it really felt like we’re at the Winter Olympics,” Anthony said.
Graham fractured his collarbone while competing in December and after surgery returned to Australia to do rehab but said he was good to go.
“It’s obviously been a very different lead up to these Olympics to the previous two,” the 27-year-old said.
“There was some tough periods in there over the last two months after the incident but I had a great team around me.
“It’s kind of remarkable how far it’s come in the last three weeks – three weeks ago today I was still sitting on the couch icing pretty much non-stop and in a sling. The shoulder’s probably not 100 per cent but it’s pretty damn close.”
