Reilly's Story
Fast Facts
Sport: Freestyle Skiing
Event: Aerials
Olympic History: Milano Cortina 2026
Highlights: Team Event World Cup Podium (Bronze)
Year Born: 2004
About Reilly
Reilly Flanagan will make his Olympic debut in aerial skiing at Milano Cortina 2026. He becomes just the third Australian male athlete in the discipline. He will compete in the individual and the new Olympic mixed team event.
In January 2025, he competed in his first World Cup, and the next day, he secured bronze in the mixed team event with Laura Peel and Abbey Willcox.
Reilly was born in Canberra and came to the snow world through an acrobatic pathway, channelling years of gymnastics into the precision and courage of aerial skiing. A scholarship athlete with the Victorian Institute of Sport, he cites Japanese great Kohei Uchimura as a sporting hero and continues to balance life on tour with tertiary study in Sport and Exercise Science.
Early results hinted at his potential. In 2023 he contested the Junior World Championships in Obertauern, Austria, placing 18th in the men’s event and combining with teammates for sixth in the mixed team. This was his first major age‑group campaign and valuable international experience. He also gained competition exposure on the North American circuit that same year, including Nor‑Am events at Utah Olympic Park, which helped lay the technical and competitive foundation for his move to senior competition.
That step came in January 2025 when Reilly made his individual World Cup debut at Lake Placid, New York. The very next day he helped Australia reach the podium in the mixed team event alongside Laura Peel and Abbey Willcox, with the trio landing all six competition jumps to secure bronze. It was Australia’s first mixed team aerials World Cup medal since 2017 and a landmark moment in his first weekend at the top level.
A fortnight later, as Australia’s women completed a historic sweep of the individual World Cup podium at Deer Valley, Reilly continued to bank important starts and training days within a team riding a crest of form. That home‑team momentum provided a demanding but inspiring environment for a newcomer finding his feet among the world’s best.
By late February, further World Cup outings in China added to his résumé, including an individual result in the thirties and a seventh place in the mixed team event with Danielle Scott and Laura Peel, as Australia fine‑tuned combinations ahead of the World Championships. The steady accumulation of reps, through qualification rounds, night finals and variable weather, helped fast‑track his growth as an aerial skier.
Reilly’s major‑championship debut followed at the 2025 World Championships in St Moritz–Engadin. Selected as the sole male in Australia’s aerials squad, he joined Danielle and Laura in the mixed team event, where the Australians finished fourth, just nine points shy of the podium, after advancing to the super final. The World Championships outcome validated his mid‑season progress and underscored his role within a high‑performing national program.
From August 2025 to January 2026, Reilly competed frequently on the Grand Prix and World Cup tours. At Ruka in Finland, he achieved his best World Cup result in 19th place, and at Lac-Beauport, he was 20th. In the mixed team’s event at Secret Garden (CHN), the Australian trio of Reilly, Danielle and Laura were fourth.
Recognition followed at season’s end when Reilly was named Aerial Skiing Male Athlete of the Year at the 2025 Snow Australia Awards, an acknowledgement of his rapid rise from development ranks to World Cup medallist and world top‑four team finisher in the space of one northern winter.
Rooted in gymnastics foundations from Canberra’s Woden Valley Gymnastics Club and nurtured by Australia’s talent‑transfer pathway, Reilly’s story is one of diligent progression: mastering core doubles, stepping onto World Cup snow, then holding his nerve on championship day. Away from the jumps, he continues his degree studies, an academic counterweight to the technical grind of winter touring. As Australia’s celebrated aerials squad presses on towards Milano Cortina and the next Olympic cycle, Reilly’s trajectory, built on consistency, composure and execution, positions him as a compelling prospect to watch in the seasons ahead.
