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Jakara's Story
Fast Facts
Sport: Freestyle Skiing
Event: Moguls
Olympic History: PyeongChang 2018, Beijing 2022 (gold)
Highlights: Gold at Beijing 2022, 3x World Cup gold medals, 2019 World Championships silver medal
Coaches: Peter McNiel, Kate Blamey
Year Born: 1998
State Born: Queensland
About Jakara
Hailing from the small coastal town of Barwon Heads in Victoria, Jakara started skiing at four years-old with her family. Growing up she was an interschool sport participant and discovered mogul skiing there. At 11 she decided to join the Team Buller Riders’ moguls program at Mount Buller and spent her winters training and competing.
A natural on her skis, Jakara wasted no time moving up the junior ranks and was offered a position on the Australian Development Ski Team in 2012. Just three years later, she made her World Cup debut as a 16-year-old at Deer Valley, USA and hasn’t looked back.
After placing 13th at the Deer Valley World Cup in February 2017, the Queensland-born skier cracked the top 10 at the Tazawako World Cup two weeks later with a ninth-place finish. Later in the season, Jakara represented Australia at the 2017 Asian Winter Games where she finished sixth in the women’s moguls event and was Australia’s Closing Ceremony Flag Bearer.
Jakara went on to make her World Championships debut at Sierra Nevada in March 2017, placing 12th in the women’s event with a solid 75.45 in the round of 18. A year later at the 2018 Deer Valley World Cup in the USA, Jakara made her first top-six super final and finished the event fifth overall.
On her Olympic debut at PyeongChang 2018 as a 19-year-old, Jakara put in an exceptional performance to finish fourth overall. She produced one of her best runs of the competition with a score of 76.81 in the first final to move through to final two in fourth place. She remained fourth after the second final with a score of 76.85, before putting down 75.38 in the super final to remain just one place behind a podium finish.
The 2018-19 World Cup tour was a breakout season for Jakara, establishing herself as one of the best female mogul skiers in the world. She won six medals across the season, including claiming her first World Cup gold medal in Lake Placid, USA, and finished the year ranked number two in the world. At the 2019 World Championships held in Deer Valley, USA, Jakara performed incredibly well to claim the silver medal in the women’s mogul event, narrowly missing out on the top spot by 0.15 points.
She continued her impressive form the following season, claiming four World Cup medals and finishing the tour ranked as number two in the world for the second year in a row.
Despite a disrupted year of training in 2020 and a number of World Cup cancellations due to the pandemic, Jakara didn’t let it bother her during the Northern Hemisphere winter. At the 2021 World Championships held in Almaty, Kazakhstan she placed fourth overall in a highly competitive women’s field.
Jakara wrapped up her Olympic qualification efforts with back-to-back medals at the World Cup in Deer Valley, USA. Her silver medal and bronze medal there in moguls took her season tally to eight medals at nine events in 2021-22 (2x gold, 3x silver, 3x bronze).
She headed to Beijing 2022 as the world no.3 in women's moguls and first in the overall mogul World Cup standings.
Jakara was in a class of her own at Beijing. In qualifying she posted an intimidating score of 83.75, more than 2.5 points clear of defending Olympic champion Perrine Laffont of France, becoming the first Australian ever to finish an Olympic moguls qualifying round on top.
It turned out to be the biggest score of the competition. The only score to rival it was another of Jakara's, 83.09, which she used to clinch the gold medal in the second final.
Jakara became Australia's first winter Olympic champion since Lydia Lassila at Vancouver 2010 in the aerials.
"It's been a dream of mine my whole life to be an Olympic champion, actually I don't think I've ever stopped dreaming about it."
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