Aerials skier Laura Peel has placed fifth at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The Australian was unable to complete a back-double-full-full in the six-woman medal round after landing a back-full-full and back-full-double-full on her opening two efforts on Friday.
Belarusian Hanna Huskova won gold after scoring 96.14 on her third attempt, a back-lay-full-full, with Chinese pair Xin Zhang and Fanyu Kong winning silver and bronze respectively.
World No.7 Peel, the 2015 world champion and a seven-time World Cup medal winner, scored 55.34 with her final effort.
The 28-year-old snuck into the second round of the finals in ninth and qualified third for the medal jump.
“The first two jumps I was having trouble with speed. I was pretty slow,” she said.
“I took a step up for the final jump.
“(I) needed more speed, we got four kilometres more which is not what we were after – maybe 1.5 would have been good.”
The result improves on her seventh placing in Sochi four years ago.
Reigning Olympic champion Alla Tsuper of Belarus was fourth after also crashing but scoring 4.6 more points on her attempted triple-twisting triple-somersault.
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Fellow Australian Danielle Scott crashed out on her first jump of the finals to finish 12th, a day after five-time Olympian Lydia Lassila and Samantha Wells were eliminated in the qualifiers.
World No.6 Scott could not land her double-twisting double-somersault to end her campaign.
While her results had been inconsistent this season she had won a World Cup gold in China back in December.
Scott was also the silver medallist from the 2017 world championships.
The team had spoken on several occasions about the swirling winds playing to their advantage given the relatively low degree of difficulty of their tricks.
But they failed to work in their favour with five-time Winter Olympian Lydia Lassila and Sam Wells both missing Friday’s finals before Scott and Peel fell short of a medal.
“We had trouble with the wind tonight. I did what I could,” Peel said.
“My goal was to make the top six; to make the super final. I did that.”
