Laura Peel

Fast Facts

Sport: Freestyle Skiing
Event: Aerials, Mixed Team (TBC)
Olympic History: Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, Beijing 2022, Milano Cortina 2026
Highlights: 2x World Championships Gold, Gold at 2022 Deer Valley World Cup, Beijing 2022 Opening Ceremony Flag Bearer
Coach: Michel Roth
Year Born: 1989

About Laura

Milano Cortina will be the fourth Olympic Games for two-time world champion Laura Peel. She has been on the World Cup aerial skiing podium 29 times throughout her career and has finished the season ranked number one in the world on three occasions. Yet the Olympic podium has eluded her so far.  

On her debut at Sochi 2014 she was seventh, and at the past two Games she was fifth. At Beijing 2022, she was joint Flag Bearer and led the Australian Team in the Opening Ceremony. And led her competition after qualification but again she came up just short in the finals. Laura won the World Cup and Olympic test event last year and has a World Cup win this season.  

Laura is ranked fifth in World Cup points for the season. She is the veteran of the 2026 Australian Olympic Team, being 36 at the Games. 

“I never imagined that I would be training for my fourth Olympics. I hoped for one, maybe two, and here we are at four, and time flies. I'm still loving what I'm doing and I think I'm still getting better." 

Born in Canberra, the gymnast-turned-skier was earmarked for aerials by Olympic great Jacqui Cooper in 2007. Within four years she was on the World Cup circuit and making the final at her first World Championships in Deer Valley.

In 2012 she won her a maiden World Cup victory the next season. A runner-up at the Sochi test event in 2013, she debuted at the Olympic Winter Games in 2014 and finished seventh in the final. 

Her rise accelerated with a breakthrough world title in 2015 at Kreischberg, Austria. After a season on the sidelines, she returned to the World Cup podium in 2017 and finished fifth at PyeongChang 2018 as Australia’s best performer in the women’s aerials final.  

Laura’s next two northern winters defined her as one of the sport’s standard-bearers. Introducing triple back somersaults into competition, she won the 2019–20 World Cup title and defended it in 2020–21, adding a second world crown in Almaty to become Australia’s first two-time world champion in aerial skiing.  

On the eve of Beijing 2022 she produced a jump for the ages at Deer Valley, winning with 118.05 points for a triple back somersault with three twists, among the highest scores ever recorded in women’s aerials. A day earlier, she became just the third woman to land a quadruple-twisting triple in training. She then had the honour of leading the Australian Team into the Opening Ceremony as joint Flag Bearer alongside figure skater Brendan Kerry.  

In Beijing, Laura topped qualifying with 104.54 points, but in blustery night conditions finished fifth in the super final, a result that spoke to the fine margins of a single-jump medal round. 

She rebounded in 2023, winning the World Cup finale in Almaty and placing second overall for the season. At the World Championships in Bakuriani, she missed the super final in seventh as teammate Danielle Scott won silver. 

After sitting out most of the 2023–24 World Cup, Laura returned in 2024–25 with trademark ambition and execution. She led Australia to bronze in the mixed team event at Lake Placid. This was Australia’s first World Cup team aerials medal since 2017, highlighted by a 118.48 score on her triple back somersault with three twists. She then won back-to-back individual events at Lac‑Beauport, spearheaded a historic Australian 1‑2‑3 (and fourth) sweep at Deer Valley, and closed the season with victory on the 2026 Olympic course in Livigno, to clinch her third career Crystal Globe as the World Cup’s number one-ranked aerialist.

At the 2025 World Championships in St Moritz, Laura qualified for the final but narrowly missed the six‑woman super final. Laura was seventh and her teammate Danielle won bronze; in the mixed team event Australia placed fourth. The season as a whole underlined Laura’s status among the world’s premier triple‑jumpers and positioned her strongly for her fourth Olympic campaign.  

The Victorian Institute of Sport athlete won the Lac-Beuport World Cup for a fourth time in January, bouncing back from 23rd the day before. She won with a full-full-full triple twisting back somersault in the super-final to score 113.76 points, to claim her her 15th World Cup gold. At the last World Cup before the 2026 Olympics she finished sixth and then fourth, as Danielle claimed gold and bronze respectively. Laura has the jumps, experience and determination to land on the Olympic podium, at what could be the fourth and last attempt for the 36-year-old. All of Australia and aerials fans will be cheering her on.