World-beating rookie ready to rock the Olympics
Australia’s secret weapon who is ready to shock the world at the Winter Games in the Olympics’s newest event.
It is snowing heavily in Ruka, a northern Finland ski town in the Arctic Circle, close to the Russian border and the Australian moguls team is training before this weekend’s start of the World Cup season.
As Australian Olympic champion Jakara Anthony stops and starts down the moguls course, and the men practise spinning off axis from the two jumps, there is another speedster with superb skiing technique emerging from the near white-out, zipping down the perfectly pitched bumps course.
Wrapped in her Australian gear, Charlotte Wilson has a compact, efficient style and doesn’t quite realise just what an impact she made in her rookie year on the World Cup circuit.
The engineering student from Jindabyne, started competing in the senior moguls competition 12 months ago, winning a gold medal and honoured as the Federation International de Ski rookie of the year.
Now, as the crucial pre-Olympic competitions get underway in Ruka this weekend, the top competitors are keeping one eye on their rivals, while trying to stamp an authoritative air on proceedings. “I definitely learned more about being an elite athlete, listening to your body, training and doing things that are right for you, not just following the calendar,’’ Wilson, 20, said of her first World Cup year.
“It has been really great to see (Australian Olympic silver medallist) Matt Graham and his work ethic. He just puts his head down and does the hard work and that’s been really inspiring. And to train alongside Jakara, the Olympic champion, is special too.
“I have learned how to take care of my body and back up from long days, not just physically but emotionally.”
Wilson’s breakout result was on the Winter Olympic course test event in Livigno, Italy in March where she stunned the ski world with a World Cup victory in dual moguls in just her 10th senior start.
This event, now on the Olympic program, is where two moguls skiers start at the top and race each other to the bottom, scoring not only on speed, but on technique and style, in a head to head elimination format.
As the spectators, and her Australian teammates stood watching in shock, Wilson knocked off the world No. 4 Canadian Maia Schwinghammer, then No. 3 Japan’s Rino Yanagimoto, followed by the 2018 Olympic Champion and world No. 2 Perrine Laffont of France. Then, in the final, Wilson faced off against superstar Jaelin Kauf, the world No. 1 and despite a slow start, overhauled the American to take the honours.
Wilson tells The Australian the dual moguls is not even her favourite event.
“I like the (traditional) moguls,’’ she says quietly. In an understatement about her achievement, she adds, “obviously I have my best result in dual moguls and you only have to beat the person next to you, which is a lot different to competing against the whole field”.
But on the snow Wilson’s reserved nature evaporates and her inner tiger emerges.
She is methodical and unfazed.
She tells me her younger sister Abbey, who is attempting to qualify for the Olympics in snowboard cross, is the one with the “go get ‘em attitude”.
Wilson started skiing across all disciplines in the winter sports program as a toddler growing up in the Snowy Mountains.
But when she was 13 she had the chance to be a forerunner in moguls, testing the course at the national championships in a year when many international teams including the sport’s superstar, Canada’s Mikael Kingsbury, were present.
From that moment she was hooked.
Wilson is working on developing high scoring tricks for the two jumps on the piste but with 80 per cent of the scoring coming from the speed down the course and the style in which that is accomplished, she knows even now she can take on the more established names on the World Cup circuit and at the Olympics.
Away from training, Wilson is head down in her studies at the University of NSW doing a Bachelor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Masters of Biomedical Engineering which she wants to incorporate into developing medical prostheses.
“It’s five years full time, but for me it will probably be 10 years,’’ she said, squeezing in her studies after a full day on the slope, rehab, physio and stretching.
“I tried to have a gap year but I just got too bored and so I started the course in term three: I just needed something else to think about and do other than skiing.”
Wilson pauses and adds innocuously – which her rivals might view ominously – “I think it’s helped my skiing too.’’
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