Silver for Scott in season-opening Aerials World Cup
Published Sun 19 Jan 2025
Danielle Scott has made a great start to the FIS Aerial Skiing World Cup season with a silver medal performance at the first event of the year in Lake Placid, USA, claiming the 22nd World Cup medal of her career.
The back-to-back defending World Cup Champion performed well in all three stages of the competition, placing second in the opening qualifications, and then secured her spot in the medal round by leading the first round of finals with an impressive full-full double twisting double back somersault that scored 92.29 points.
In the super-final medal round, Scott increased her degree of difficult to perform a triple twisting double back somersault, scoring 95.17 points, falling agonisingly close to victory by the small margin of 0.35 points, giving 2022 Olympic Champion Mengtao Xu of China the gold medal on 95.52. Rounding out the podium in third with a score of 90.94 was Canadian Marion Thenault.
“Pretty stoked, it was awesome to get back in the start gate again, this year has been a pretty big ride on a rollercoaster, so grateful to just be here,” said the 34-year-old Scott from NSW, who trains in Brisbane at the Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre water jump facility.
“Today had everything weather wise, head winds to tail winds to falling snow, to everything changing on us in such small windows, very grateful and happy for my coaches for getting all the attention to detail right and trusting everything out there.
“Experience definitely played a big role, it wasn’t my first time dealing with tricky weather, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t with wind gusts, so you have to take it as it comes, and I am grateful for that experience.
Abbey Willcox also qualified for the final in fifth place and went on to finish in eighth in the first round of finals.
Missing out on the final was Airliegh Frigo in 20th and double World Champion Laura Peel in 21st.
Also competing for Australia in their World Cup debuts were Sidney Stephens in 28th, Elise Coleiro 29th and Reilly Flanagan 29th.
The aerial skiers will be back in action tomorrow in Lake Placid competing in the first mixed team event of the season. Scott and Lara Peel will be joined by debutant 19-year-old Flanagan in the three-person Australian team.
