Beijing Winter Olympics: It’s snowing medals as records tumble

Australia is relishing its most successful start of a Winter Games courtesy of Jakara Anthony and Tess Coady.

Australia’s freestyle skiers chair gold medallist Jakara Anthony after her win in the women’s moguls.

Australia is already breaking records at the Beijing Olympics, relishing its most successful start of a Winter Games courtesy of Jakara Anthony, a quiet, steely moguls rider who perfected a trick no other woman has managed, and Tess Coady, the great-granddaughter of a former Richmond football club captain and known as Tess The Goddess from an early age for her talent and sparky personality.

This yin and yang of the Australian team delivered the first ­female Winter Olympic medals since 2014, the first gold in 12 years and the first time Australia has won two Winter Olympic Games medals on one day.

“We had a fantastic day … two remarkable performances,’’ said chef de mission Geoff Lipshut.

First Coady, 21, won the bronze medal in the women’s slopestyle, an event where snowboarders slide off rails and then soar into three high-flying, twisting jumps.

She had to wait anxiously at the bottom of the event watching seven more riders, five of whom could have relegated her out of the medals, but none completed their runs as cleanly or as skilfully as the St Kilda woman.

Then Anthony overcame the excruciating pressure of being the last competitor in the moguls final to roar down the mountain, knees pumping, and launching into two high-scoring difficult tricks that no woman has delivered in competition before. It is called a cork 720 mute, which involves doing a double twist off axis and grabbing the ski, and then landing it to immediately launch into the moguls with perfectly parallel turns. “I might be the first girl at the Olympics to have completed one”, Anthony, 23, quietly noted, adding her win was “very, very exciting”.

Effervescent Coady received her bronze medal on Sunday night and when asked where she had stashed it overnight, she replied “I still haven’t been to sleep so I haven’t stashed it”, pulling it out of her pocket.

Anthony competes in the women’s moguls. Picture: Getty Images

Anthony, Australia’s sixth gold medallist at a Winter Olympics, burst onto the inter­national scene four years ago in PyeongChang where she finished a surprise fourth. She was introduced to the snow by her parents Darren and Sue, who were avid skiers, and she was schooled at Mount Buller for third terms for several years. By 10, she knew moguls was the sport for her.

“It is the challenge,” she said. “The moguls are always changing. It’s never the same run. There are so many different skills you have to get together in one go which requires so much hard work but that just makes the feeling when you hit it all the better.’’

A self-admitted perfectionist, Anthony said she had been working on calming her nerves for big competitions as she knew she had the technical skills to be the best.

Tess Coady leaps high for bronze in the snowboard slopestyle. Picture: Getty Images

Coady came into snow sports through gymnastics, at which she competed at state level alongside sister Lilly. Then the family decided on a holiday to the snow. Said Coady’s father, Tony: “One day on that holiday and it was getting dark and we were thinking ‘where the hell is Tess?’ She was having so much fun”.

Lipshut said their success had its roots in the women before them like aerialists Alisa Camplin and Lydia Lassila and mogul gold medallist Dale Begg-Smith.