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Weekend Wrap: Kookaburras’ hot World Cup start, Guseli wins historic Big Air Crystal Globe and more

 

Weekend Wrap: Kookaburras’ hot World Cup start, Guseli wins historic Big Air Crystal Globe and more

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Blake Govers and Jeremy Hayward Tokyo 2020

The Kookaburras have put together a convincing win to begin their FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup campaign, while it was a weekend of firsts for our Aussies in the winter sports world.

Hockey

It was the Tom and Jerry show in India as the Kookaburras completed an 8-0 hammering of France in their World Cup opener.

Olympians Tom Craig and Jeremy Hayward both scored hat-tricks, plus Flynn Ogilvie and Tom Wickham found the back of the net as the Aussie men’s team made a great start to the tournament.

 

The team wore black armbands in memory of former Kookaburra and Australian hockey great Brian Glencross who passed away late last year. Tom dedicated his man of the match performance to Brian and his family.

“I felt pretty good but more importantly the team performed well,” Tom said.

“We’re a proud group and I’d like to acknowledge Brian Glencross and his family back in Perth. We’re proud of our Kookaburras history so this one was for them.”

“We were raring to go today. We haven’t played tournament hockey since July so we have prepared well for the World Cup, prepared well for our first game against France and that showed.”

 

The Kookaburras’ attention now turns to what is expected to be a much sterner test against 2016 Olympic gold medallists Argentina for their next pool match at 12:30am AEDT on Tuesday. They’ll then face South Africa on Friday at 6:30pm AEDT.

Find out more about the Kookaburras World Cup campaign here.

Snowboard

17-year-old Beijing 2022 Olympian Valentino Guseli has wrapped up the Big Air World Cup season holding the Crystal Globe.

In doing so he became the first Australian overall Big Air World Cup winner in a season.

Val sealed it in Austria by finishing fourth, enough to maintain top spot on the standings. At the start of the season he also made history by becoming the first Australian ever to win a big air World Cup event.

Luge

Triple Olympian Alex Ferlazzo has done what no Aussie has before, winning a Nations Cup title.

The luger brought up the achievement in Sigulda, Latvia by being two-tenths of a second faster than Anton Dukach (UKR).

 

"My run today was really quite good,” Alex said to the International Luge Federation.

“It is my first win in the Nations Cup and I see progress and that I am improving with time.”

He followed that performance up a day later to compete in the World Cup, finishing a solid 13th.

Water Polo

The Tri Nations Test Match Series in Perth between Australia, Japan and the USA delivered a mixed bag of results for the Sharks and Aussie Stingers.

The Sharks played Japan, with the series ending in a draw after both teams split a win, a draw and a loss.

While the final match saw the Aussies go down to the visitors 11-13, head coach Tim Hamill said the team showcased some good progress, but admitted they still have a way to go as they work towards Paris 2024 and beyond.

“We are happy where we are but certainly not hiding from the fact we've got a long way to go,” Hamill said.

“I really can't fault the playing group, from day one we spoke about character, we spoke about effort and they're the two things that must be stock standard with this group. I'm really excited about what we can do in the next 18 months leading to the Paris Olympic Games.”

Aussie Sharks co-captain and Tokyo Olympian Blake Edwards said the side really valued the chance to play on home soil and to quite simply get more international competition under their belt.

“The home crowd support has been spectacular,” Blake said.

“I think we’ve got a good group of guys that are super ambitious and really motivated. We lack a bit of experience but that will come with just more games, more tours and training camps like this one.”

The Stingers hosted the USA, the current Olympic and World Champions, and forced a draw in the opener before losing the final two matches.

Aussie Stingers Head Coach, Paul Oberman, said he’s taking a lot of positives out of this week as he looked to introduce more young players to the international stage, with a number of players based overseas currently.

“We’ve done really well, I’m super positive,” Oberman said.

“They are a young group but they have been challenged by the Olympic and world champions, and any time you get the chance to challenge yourself against them it’s a fantastic opportunity to learn.

“We are really confident we are going to keep improving, and I think we’ll surprise some people.”

In camp with the Aussie Stingers were a number of Olympians from over the years, including members of the gold medal team from Sydney 2000, as coaching and support staff.

“They provide a lot of mentoring, are role models for our players and offer a different perspective to what I bring.”

Dual Olympian and Aussie Stingers captain Zoe Arancini echoed Oberman’s comments.

“The results didn’t go our way but I think it has been a very good learning experience for our girls.”

Tennis

Thanasi Kokkinakis has had a strong preparation for the Australian Open by making the semi-finals of the Adelaide International.

He was gunning for a second-straight Adelaide International singles title, but Spaniard Roberto Bautista Augut shut down those plans with a hard-fought 7-6(4) 3-6 6-3 win.

Thanasi did all he could to turn the momentum, with the match taking just over two and a half hours to complete. His run to the semi-finals included knocking out two top-30 ranked players, no.1 seed Andrey Rublev (RUS) and Miomir Kecmanovic (SRB).

It sets up Thanasi’s singles campaign at the Australian Open, where he is one of 16 Australians in the singles draw and one of 31 players in the doubles which gets underway today.

Monobob

Bree Walker’s started her 2023 year in the monobob with back-to-back top five finishes on the World Cup circuit.

Both events were held in Germany across Altenberg (5th) this weekend and Winterberg (5th) last weekend.

 

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