Jacqui Cooper and Lydia Lassila have jumped to their second quinella of the season, taking gold and silver medals at the first World Cup aerial skiing event to be held on the Vancouver 2010 Olympic jump site.
Jacqui Cooper and Lydia Lassila have jumped to their second quinella of the season, taking gold and silver medals at the first World Cup aerial skiing event to be held on the Vancouver 2010 Olympic jump site.
Cooper collected her fourth victory of the season in a weather-disrupted single jump competition, extending her lead in the World Cup title chase to 175 points over Chinese skier Nina Li, with just three events remaining.
The women’s training and competition was disrupted for more than five hours by heavy snowfalls and the familiar thick fog that had forced the cancellation of Saturday’s mogul skiing event.
When the skies cleared late in the afternoon, Cooper delivered a high class triple twisting triple somersault on the back of a handfull of training jumps, scoring 101.85 points.
Lassila was right behind her Flying Kangaroos team-mate, earning 95.17 points for her triple twisting double somersault, repeating the one-two result that they achieved in the opening event of the year.
Bronze went to young Chinese jumper Shaungfai Dai on 93.67 points.
Cooper now has 520 points on the World Cup standings, a healthy margin over Li on 345.
Lassila’s silver lifted her to within four points of the Chinese skier on 341 points, in third place.
“I just needed to know that I was going to be OK today,” Cooper said after claiming the 23rd victory of her career.
“Experience is massive and you don’t get to 35 without a lot of it.”
“I went through every possible jumping scenario today, expecting everything from good to bad.”
“I didn’t know if I was going to compete, I didn’t know if I was going to be doing doubles (somersaults).”
“I went on the double kicker for a while, then I ducked over to the triple, I completely missed one of my training jumps and then I did the highest DD (degree of difficulty) in the world in the competition, which shows that I’ve got great skills when I need them.”
“So I’m really proud of myself.”
The Australian team now travels to Inawashiro, Japan, for the seventh event of the season next weekend.
Olympic Winter Institute