Aerial skiing gold for Peel and mogul silver for Graham
Published Sun 26 Jan 2025
Courtesy OWIA
Australia celebrated a triumphant morning in North America, as Laura Peel clinched victory in the aerial skiing World Cup event in Lac-Beauport, Canada, and Matt Graham secured a silver medal in the dual mogul World Cup at Waterville Valley, USA.
Two-time World Champion Peel carried on her outstanding form from the team event in Lake Placid last weekend to land both her spectacular triple back somersaults in the final rounds competing in freezing -20 temperatures.
In the first round of finals Peel performed a lay-full-full, double twisting triple back somersault to advance to the super-final with a score of 104.32 points in first place.
For the final jump of the event, Peel increased her degree of difficulty adding an extra twist, with her full-full-full, triple twisting triple back somersault, scoring a huge 117.19, to give her the tenth World Cup gold medal of her career, finishing ahead of Chinese skiers Meiting Chen on 102.31 in second and Mengtao Xu in third with 92.72.
“Today was a good day, I am really happy with my jumping, I have been working to build consistency, and today it was three-from-three, and I hope it will be the same tomorrow” said the 35-year-old from Canberra.
“I have been at this a long time, this is maybe my twelfth of thirteenth year on tour, so I am used to being cold, but when you have a job to do you just put it to the back of your mind. I have a few cues that I tell myself before every jump, I am just trying to stay calm and focus on the process.”
Also making finals for Australia was Danielle Scott in eighth place and in the qualification round Sidney Stephens was 15th, Airleigh Frigo 19th, Abbey Willcox 21st, Elsie Coleiro 25th and Reilly Flanagan 36th.
A second World Cup event will take place at Lac-Beauport tomorrow.
Olympic medallist Matt Graham has skied to the 26th World Cup podium of his impressive career, following a silver medal performance in the dual moguls in Waterville Valley, USA, the birthplace of freestyle skiing.
Graham showed great form throughout the day, making his way through the earlier rounds with ease before winning difficult match ups against Frenchman Benjamin Cavet in the quarter finals 20 to 15, and an impressive semi-final victory over Ikuma Horishima of Japan 18 to 17.
In the big final Graham faced legendary Canadian Mikael Kingsbury, and in a close duel right to the finish line Kingsbury prevailed 21 to 14, extending his record for the most ever wins for a freestyle skier to 94. Roundng out the podium in third place was Filip Gravenfors of Sweden who defeated Horishima for the bronze.
“It is nice to be on the podium for the first time this season” said the 30-year-old Graham from the NSW Central Coast.
“Duals is always a long challenging day, a lot of top-to-bottoms at crazy fast speeds, at the start of the day I was just happy to get through to the finals, and once they came around it was just full send from there.
“I have felt like all of the pieces have been there, but it just hasn’t stuck yet, making a few mistakes in the previous events, so it was nice to have some solid skiing today, especially this week after battling the flu and bedridden two days ago with chronic fevers and still feeling under the weather yesterday was pretty rewarding.”
Also in action were Aussies Oliver Logan in 27th, Cooper Woods 30th, Edwad Hill 32nd, George Murphy 35th and women Charlotte Wilson 18th, Lottie Lodge 31st, Lucy Pernice 34th and Emma Bosco 35th.
Next weekend the mogul skiers compete at the World Cup event in Val St.Come, Canada, with moguls on February 1 and dual moguls February 2.
