Discipline: Freestyle Aerials
Olympic Participation: Lillehammer 1994, Nagano 1998, Salt Lake City 2002, Torino 2006, Vancouver 2010
Achievements: World Champion (1999), World Championship bronze (2007, 2009), 40 World Cup podiums (24 gold), FIS Aerials World Cup Title (1999-2001, 2007-2008), FIS Freestyle World Cup Title (1999-2001)
Medal awarded in: 2021

With 40 World Cup podiums, including 24 gold medals, Jacqui Cooper was the most successful Australian World Cup athlete and a trail-blazer for Australian aerials skiers.

Cooper got her start in the sport when she was 16 years old, recruited by OWIA CEO Geoff Lipshut. Lipshut knew Cooper was fascinated with acrobatics and not afraid to take a risk, so he offered her a place in the Mt Buller Techne Team, a junior development program for kids aged between 12-18, based at Mt Buller. It was the start of a long and valuable partnership of over 20 years, during which Cooper rose to the highest levels of the sport. 

Cooper wasn’t a skier, so at the beginning she focused on learning the necessary technique to be able to ski into a jump and land. She trained at Mt Buller during the domestic season and then skied in a freestyle skiing program at Steamboat Springs, Colorado, during the Northern Winter.  After a lot of effort and time spent on snow, she became a very good skier and was also able to participate in two different films directed by American ski and snowboarding filmmaker Warren Miller.

Not long after, in 1997, Jacqui Cooper achieved her first World Cup podium - a silver medal in Meiringen, Switzerland. That breakthrough performance reinforced her self-belief and clarified the vision Geoff Lipshut had for her when they met a few years earlier: she could be a champion in the sport.

And what a champion she became. Jacqui Cooper was the first Australian woman to make five Olympic teams, summer or winter. She won the FIS Aerials World Cup five times, more than any other aerial skier, male or female. She won the FIS Freestyle Ski Crystal Globe three consecutive times between 1999 and 2001. Last but certainly not least, she was also Aerials World Champion in 1999, a title to which she added bronze medals in 2007 and 2009. 

Additionally, she set many benchmarks, among them the first performance of the triple twisting triple somersault during a competition.

After hanging her one-piece ski suit, Cooper continued to use her skillset and the many tools in her toolbox (including a passion for hard work, self-belief, drive and resilience) in every area of her life. She became a successful motivational speaker, a business owner, an author and an entrepreneur. She also found the time to raise three children with her husband Mario, an experience that she described as her greatest moment beyond sport.