Team Australia’s FIS World Championship campaign has kicked off with a bang as aerial skier Danielle Scott takes silver. This is the third World Championship of Scott’s career.
The weather in Bakuriani, Georgia presented some tricky conditions. Both snowfall and high winds meant the final was rescheduled by 24 hours.
After qualifying in first place for finals competition two days earlier, Scott stepped up her degree of difficulty in the first round of finals to perform a lay-full-full double twist triple back somersault, but with fresh snow making speed difficult, had trouble with her landing scoring 82.97 points to take the final spot in the six-woman medal round.
Scott elected to stick with triple somersaults for the final jump, performing a lay-tuck-full, a single twist triple somersault scoring 83.84 points, again marked down for her landing, putting her in second place behind event winner Fanyu Kong of China with 85.30 points. Rounding out the podium in third place with Ukrainian Anastasiya with 82.84.
Two-time World Champion Laura Peel was unlucky not to make the final round, missing out by one place in seventh after scoring 80.29 on her full-tuck-full triple somersault.
“It feels incredible, but it doesn’t quite feel real yet,” said the 32-year from NSW, who now trains in Brisbane at the Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre Water Jump facility.
“It’s been the craziest week, I didn’t actually think we’d be here, but here we are. I’m super happy and yeah, I’ve just got to let it sink in.”
“We didn’t know what today was going to be like after cancelling yesterday, so you just have to stay in the game, but also not over think it, because that’s really easy to do.”
“I committed to jumping triples, we went for a lay-tuck-full and it was really good, it was so close to taking the World Championship, but got to be happy.”
