Aussie hopeful Jakara Anthony knows it’s who dares wins
Jakara Anthony, one of Australia’s top medal prospects at the Beijing Games, is deep in preparations for the women’s freestyle skiing moguls event.
For the next 19 days, a sun-drenched, heat-sapped nation will find some cool relief in the Winter Olympics, cheering for athletes they haven’t heard about for four years in sports that are unfamiliar to most of those watching.
Athletes such as Jakara Anthony, one of Australia’s top medal prospects at the Beijing Games, who is deep in preparations for the women’s freestyle skiing moguls event.
There are some sports at the Winter Olympics where it pays to be out of control. Mogul skiing is one of them. To be the very best, they also need to take risks as they career down an icy slope covered in bumps, performing hair-rising aerial tricks, even when it frightens the life out of them.
“That’s definitely mogul skiing for you,” said Anthony, who will compete in the qualifying round on Thursday and hope to win gold in the final on Sunday.
“When you ride on that edge is when you’re going to do your best skiing. It’s a very scary place to get to, but it’s a pretty awesome feeling too when you get there.”
Just 23, Anthony has a fearless approach to the sport, plus a new trick that she started using this season and hopes will get her on the podium in China.
The Cork 720 mute – a full flip with two rotations and a grab of her skis in mid-air – is so outrageous that hardly anyone else in the world will even attempt it.
“In the women’s field, in competition right now, I am the only person,” she said.
“There are some other girls that I’ve seen do it in training, but not competed it yet. And in the men’s field there’s a couple of men that do it as well.”
If Anthony lands the jump at the Olympics it’ll go a long way to getting her on the medal podium as it scores so highly because of the extra degree of difficulty.
Although the Beijing opening ceremony will be held on Friday night, Australia’s first competitors will be on the ice on Wednesday in the preliminary rounds of the mixed doubles curling.
Tahli Gill, whose hopes looked shot when she tested positive for Covid on arrival in China, has been cleared to join Dean Hewitt as the first Australians to qualify in curling at any Winter Olympics after two more tests came back negative.
Curlers will compete in the same iconic Beijing venue that hosted swimming at the 2008 Beijing summer Games – then called the Water Cube, now the Ice Cube.
Gill and Hewitt will be directing their highly polished stone at the same venue where Stephanie Rice, Leisel Jones and Libby Trickett won gold medals for Australia and US legend Michael Phelps won eight.
Hewitt said he hoped the inclusion of an Australian team would be a gamechanger for curling in Australia.
“I hope it’s going to be huge,” Hewitt said. “I hope it’s going to be a moment where more people get to see it, get out there and give it a go.”
Anthony, who competed as a teenager at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics in South Korea and won the silver medal at the last world championships, can’t wait to get started in Beijing.
“It’s such a unifying thing, the Olympics,” she said.
“It’s so special to be a part of it. It is everything it’s made up to be.”
Additional reporting: David Tanner
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