Amazing winter weekend delivers a full set of medals

Danielle Scott on the podium with her fellow place-getters in China. Courtesy www.fisski.com

Courtesy www.owia.org

Saturday ended how it began, with Australians on the podium, when Danielle Scott won silver in the Ladies Aerials World Cup in the season opening event in Beida Lake, China.

Following in the golden and bronze paths set by Belle Brockhoff and Champy Pullin in Snowboard Cross this morning, Danielle finished off the day by delivering a full set of World Cup medals as she sailed through the Aerials qualifying, Final 1 and Final 2 medal-decider.

Danielle’s consistency, majestic height and excellent air form on all three jumps garnered the result she was after and one which she and OWIA/VIS coaches Jeff Bean and Joe Davies planned for.

“It was a great day out there and I’m happy with how my jumping is progressing for the start of the season,” Danielle said after the event.

“It was a bit tricky with some change in conditions for the final jump but I was really pleased to have done some clean jumps throughout the rounds.”

In training, Danielle had concentrated on making the jumps “bigger and better” by working on the doubles to a higher-degree of difficulty.

“I love a healthy, competitive environment and being in the rhythm of performing.”

And it showed.

Conditions in Beida Lake could have been as harsh as minus 36 degrees, but the weather was kind to all the field, despite some changes before the medal round.

“The sun dramatically moved off the jumps so the speeds were changing and lighting quite different,” the 2016 World Silver medallist said.  

“It’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before but it always makes it tricky when you are trying to max out the final jump.”

“It feels really good to have executed a plan and degree of difficulty but I know there is room for improvement.”

Returning 2015 World Champion Laura Peel made her debut event after a long rehab and easily made it through the qualifying with a high-quality gorgeous Back Full Full, scoring an identical 86.31 to Danielle Scott that was only broken by .10 for Air.

In Final 1, the same jump didn’t go quite as well as qualifying and did not land as well as she would have liked, scoring 59.53 and putting her out of Final 2.

“I had a solid day of training and performed well in the qualification. Unfortunately things didn’t come together in the finals, but I’m happy to back out there competing in World Cups,” Laura said.

Samantha Wells was placed 14th in Qualifying with 63.63 points.

The gold went to Mengtao Xu from China with 94.47 points, silver to Danielle Scott on 87.06 and bronze to 17-year-old Russian Liubov Nikitina on 82.53.

In the Men’s qualifying, injury and limited training got the better of Dave Morris who had a day he will put down to experience, with a low-scoring jump that ended his season opener earlier than planned.  

The Chinese resort will host a second World Cup aerial event tomorrow (Sunday 18 December) with an individual one-jump World Cup, which will also count as the qualification round for a mixed team event in the afternoon.