Tess Coady’s electrifying leap into the valley of the blind

The best athletes have a weightlessness about them. A grace. Tess Coady rides her snowboard like Stephanie Gilmore rides a surfboard.

Tess Coady soars into the stratosphere during the Women's Snowboard Big Air final

The view from the top of the Big Air run is electrifying and terrifying. A steep drop into a white snowy bowl before an inverted and imposing 49m ramp sends Tess Coady another five metres into the stratosphere.

She cannot see the landing zone from the elevated starting position. It’s just somewhere on the other side of the ramp, down in the valley of the blind.

It looks like the world ends at the ramp and she’s about to throw herself off the edge. She’ll take three leaps of faith in her snowboard final at the Winter Olympics. Her best two will count. It’s a not a religious nor a spiritual leap of faith, just belief in her silky ability to take the hair-raising drop, leave terra firma, do some acrobatics while she’s drifting through the sky and then make her landing without blowing out her knee again. Massive injuries are part and parcel of Big Air. No one dares suggest you go out and break a leg.

Great event. Name says it all. Get air. Big air. It’s aerial skiing on a snowboard. Eddie the Eagle for experts. You go fast. You go big or you go home. You do a few party tricks while you’re up there. You land smoothly or in bone-jarring, tendon-twisting disappointment. That’s it. The equivalent of a long-driving contest in golf. Stuff the nuances.

It was started by French-Canadian daredevils who adored the extreme nature of winter sports. The kind of adventurous souls who firmly believing bigger is better. They’re probably right.

The best athletes have a weightlessness about them. A grace. Lightness in the feet and fingertips. Their techniques are as natural as taking a breath. Coady has caught the eye for these qualities while grabbing bronze in the slopestyle. Some sportspeople just stop you in your tracks and make you think, wow, who’s that?

Coady rides her snowboard like Stephanie Gilmore rides a surfboard. There’s a balletic quality to it. And she seems as happy as a clam. It’ll come as no surprise if she finishes the day with a Gilmore-esque yew!

Coady can become Australia’s first Winter Olympian to win two medals at a single Games. She grins atop the big dipper. Her first run is a beauty. A sizzling 85-pointer that puts her in third position. New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (93.25) and Austria’s Anna Gasser (90) are the pacesetters, making a breathtakingly difficult and dangerous task appear easy. The tiny Synnot, in particular, drifts like a butterfly. Her big air is a full metre bigger than anyone else’s.

Coady says this event isn’t really her thing, compared to the slopestyle, but it’s looking like her thing now she’s in the medal hunt. Then it all goes kaput.

She bounces out of her second landing and gets a mere 27.75 points. Before her third run, she’s seventh. All or nothing. She wobbles before lift-off and crashes in the valley of the blind.

Three more bounces, including one off her head. Look at the photo sequence. She’s going, going, gone. It wasn’t really her thing after all. The big air was there but so was a brutal crashing back down to Earth.

No matter. She exudes joy. Gasser wins when Sadowski-Synnott’s fluffs her final run. Having won New Zealand’s first Winter Olympics gold medal in the slopestyle, she’s only narrowly missed out on her nation’s second.

Bronze goes to Japan’s Kokomo Murase. They all hug and kiss, in scenes reminiscent of the women’s skateboarding final at Tokyo.

Coady finishes ninth. Australia’s medal tally stays at four. One gold, two silver, one bronze. I’m not buying into the spiel about this being Australia’s most successful Winter Olympics. Golds are the thing. They’re wins. The 2010 Vancouver haul of two gold and a silver rates above the Beijing return. Minor medals are great, but they’re not victories.

If Coady is frustrated by eating it on her final two runs, she’s do a grand job of hiding it. To use the vernacular of snowboarders and surfers, she’s frothing.

“Even though I didn’t land the second and third attempts, I’m still hyped,” she says. “I definitely butchered it pretty hard on the last one. Honestly, that was such a sick day. So much fun to be a part of.

“I was like, oh, I don’t want to eat it too hard. I’m so hyped for all the girls on the podium. Anna especially, because we’ve ridden together heaps. This has been unbelievable. I’ve had the best experience. It’s been such a blast. Thanks heaps! Yew!”