Cox sheds tears of joy as Jakara wins gold

By JEFF ZEUSCHNER and AAP SHE may have missed a medal herself, but Mt Beauty's Britt Cox was shedding tears of joy nonetheless as she hugged teammate and close friend Jakara Anthony after the 23–year old crushed the competition to end Australia's 12–year Winter Olympics gold–medal drought at Beijing on Sunday night. Cox finished 14th in her fourth successive Olympic Games, and said she was unsure if she would ski on or look to retire. Setting aside that decision, there was no shortage of social media messages of support for the Falls Creek regular. Her influence in Australia's rise in women's moguls has been enormous, with Anthony saying she started to dream of Olympic gold after watching Cox debut as a 15 year old at the Vancouver Games in 2010. Anthony said Cox had guided her to gold. "To have Britt as a teammate, she's truly a phenomenal athlete and phenomenal person and I'm so proud of what she's been able to achieve over her career and to share that with her has been so incredible," she said. Anthony's victory to take gold was emphatic. She led the two–day competition through every round and then scored 83.09 points to comfortably win the six–woman super final to earn gold on Sunday. American Jaelin Kauf (80.28) was a surprise second while Russian Anastasiia Smirnova (77.72) collected bronze ahead of defending Olympic champion Perrine Laffont. After finishing fourth on her Olympic debut four years ago in PyeongChang, Anthony identified the air component as the weakness in the women's competition. Through Beijing, she was the only skier – and the first women in Olympic competition – to include a 'cork 720 mute' jump, with the higher degree of difficulty giving her an edge on her rivals. She completed the jump around 2000 times in practice at the newly–built water ramp training facility in Brisbane before using it in her competition run. "My top air jump is called a cork 720 mute," she said, explaining that the cork is the off–axis rotation, 720 is two rotations and the mute is the way she grabbed her skis. "I started competing that just the season. "That's my highest degree of difficulty and it's pretty special and I think I might be the first girl at the Olympics to have competed one so that's pretty special. "The women's aerial packages have progressed so much since PyeongChang – it's like night and day – and I will definitely be looking to continue to progress my own and keep pushing everyone else." Sunday marked the first time in Winter Olympics history that Australia had won more than one medal on a single day after Tess Coady claimed bronze in the women's snowboard slopestyle earlier. Anthony said she couldn't wait to celebrate with her Australian teammate. "I'm so stoked for Tess – I was trying not to get too caught up in the hype because I had my own competition but I will definitely be hanging out with her," she said. Anthony is only the sixth Australian Winter Olympics gold medallist, with the others being: The others are: • 2002 Salt Lake City: Steven Bradbury – men's 1000m short track speed skating and Alisa Camplin – women' aerials; • 2006 Turin: Dale Begg–Smith – men's moguls; and • 2010 Vancouver: Torah Bright – women's snowboard halfpipe and Lydia Lassila – women's aerials. OTHER LOCAL OLYMPIANS Mt Beauty cross country skier and Australian Winter Olympic team member PHIL BELLINGHAM, together with teammate Seve de Campo, competed in the 30km Skiathlon on Sunday, but were lapped. Russian Alexander Bolshunov won the gold in a time of 1:16:09.8, finishing well ahead of compatriot Denis Spitsov who took the silver medal, with Finland's Iivo Niskanen, rated as the best classic skier in the world, taking the bronze. Bellingham was competing in the Individual Sprint Freestyle last night and has the 15km Classic event from 6pm tomorrow night, with the 50km Freestyle from 5pm next Saturday, February 19. Fellow Birkenbeiner Nordic Ski Club member and Aussie team colleague CASEY WRIGHT has the 10km Classic from 6pm tomorrow, Team Sprint Classic from 8pm next Wednesday, February 16, and 30km Freestyle from 5.30pm on Saturday, February 20. Meanwhile, Porepunkah based Aussie alpine skier GRETA SMALL will compete in the women's Super–G from 2pm this Friday, the women's Downhill from 2pm on Tuesday, February 15, and the women's Combined (Downhill/Slalom) from 1pm on Thursday, February 17.

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