Veteran Lydia Lassila schooling rivals ahead of Winter Olympics
SHE likes to joke about her age but 35-year-old mother-of-two Lydia Lassila is schooling much younger rivals in the lead up to the Winter Olympics.
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SHE likes to joke about her age but 35-year-old mother-of-two Lydia Lassila is schooling much younger rivals in the lead up to the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang
Lassila, heading to her fifth Games next month, has won gold in her second last meet before the Winter Olympics.
Lassila, who missed the finals at her last event, won gold and Laura Peel a bronze at the Aerial Skiing World Cup in Lake Placid, New York.
“Long day, you know it’s hard for me to make it through a day I’m one year older this year,” she joked.
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“You always want to be in the final especially in the Super Final so it’s important for me to do that and go through that process and have these long days so that I know in PyeongChang I’ve got that.
“But it was good, I really took it one jump at a time which is how I’ve kind of always tried to and I just felt really on, especially tonight I just felt really calm, confident, aggressive, assertive – all the right things that I needed to feel.
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“I didn’t do too many training jumps because I just needed to conserve my body for tomorrow and, you know, just in general.”
Peel said she was delighted to be on the podium with her veteran teammate.
“I mean, Lyd’s like a superwoman so it’s always cool to be on the podium with her and Hanna [Huskova] from Belarus doing triples, it’s awesome seeing triples out there from the ladies,” she said.
On Sunday Lassila won silver and Peel bronze at the second Aerial Skiing World Cup in New York.
Lassila achieved the feat despite a bout of food poisoning.
Lassila has now claimed five medals since rejoining the World Cup circuit in 2017.