Matt Graham is adamant the greatest moguls skier can be beaten – it’s just that no one has regularly been able to do it.
Canadian Mikael Kingsbury has dominated the bumps like no other skier before him, winning six consecutive World Cup titles, 48 individual events and seven world championship medals.
In a judged sport his strike rate has been phenomenal, to the point where he went through 13 World Cup meets over 2017/18 undefeated.
Yet in among all that there are a few rays of hope for the 23 year-old Australian, who’ll compete in Monday’s final.
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Graham, who missed the super final by one spot in finishing seventh at Sochi, beat Kingsbury on home turf at Perisher in a non-World Cup event last year.
He also edged the Canadian for World Cup gold in Calgary at the start of 2017.
And for all Kingsbury’s success since 2010, there’s no Olympic gold medal on his mantle piece yet – his breakthrough came after the Vancouver Games and he was second in Sochi.
“Mikael is an exceptional athlete. He is ultra-consistent and that’s what makes him so great. He is able to put runs down day in, day out that are really high quality,” Graham said.
“A bad run for him is second or third place, which not many people can really say.
“But for us he is beatable. I know I can beat him and a bunch of other guys can beat him.”
Graham’s 2017/18 season has included three thirds and a second at World Cup level, suggesting a medal is definitely in reach on his day.
He showed his steel in a World Cup event in Utah last month, coming off a drip in hospital in the lead-up to claim a bronze medal.
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Graham appeared a little underscored in qualifying in ninth for the finals in PyeongChang but coach Steve Desovich admitted there were still a few things to work on for the NSW Central Coast-based skier.
“We just went out there and looked at the video of his (qualifying) run objectively,” Desovich said.
“We got some jumps going (in training) and improved some things on the skiing side.”
Rohan Chapman-Davies and James Matheson will attempt to work their way through to the finals via the first repechage while Brodie Summers will do well to get a start.
In warm-up for qualifying Summers re-injured his right knee, having torn his ACL in September.
He can start if passed fit but would be unlikely to progress past the repechage.
Elsewhere on Monday for the Australians, snowboard halfpipe riders Emily Arthur and Holly Crawford start qualifying for the women’s halfpipe.
