Australia’s Most Successful Winter Olympics Wraps Up In Beijing.
Mountainwatch | Reggae Elliss
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics wrapped up last night, ski cross athlete Sami Kennedy-Sim having the honour as flag bearer and leading the Australian team into the closing ceremony. These were Sami’s third Olympics and she matched her 2018 result from PyeongChang, making the small final to finish in eighth place.
While many athletes left China soon after their events had concluded, there was still a 30-strong Australian contingent marching last night, celebrating Australia’s four medals – one gold, two silvers and a bronze – the best result ever for an Australian Winter Games team.
Jakara Anthony’s gold medal in the women’s moguls was the high point and while she was always favoured to figure in the medals Jakara dominated every round of the event on her way to the win. It was an awesome performance.
Scotty James, silver in snowboard halfpipe, and Tess Coady, bronze in the snowboard slopestyle, were also among the pre-Olympic favourites and lived up to expectations. Jackie Narracott’s silver in the skeleton was the first time an Australian has won a medal in a sliding event, but she was also in strong form leading into the Olympics, winning a World Cup in mid-January.
Of course, sport is about high and lows, something that is even more intense at the Olympics and there was disappointment for some of our athletes who finished just outside the medals. This includes medal contenders Belle Brockhoff, fourth in the boardercross, Laura Peel, fifth in aerials and Bree Walker fifth in Monobob (single bobsleigh).
However, there was a lot to celebrate and the results of young athletes like Valentino Guseli, 6thsnowboard halfpipe and Cooper Woods, sixth in moguls, both in three first Olympics, augurs well for the future. The teams overall achievements are impressive and include:
- – A record seven Top-5 finishes
- – A record nine Top-6 finishes
- – Fourteen Top 10 finishes
Australia’s Chef de Mission Geoff Lipshut described the Australian Team competing at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games as the best he’s been associated with.
“The number of medal opportunities we had at these Games is far beyond anything I have experienced,” Lipshut said. “Before these Games I said if we managed four medals, that would be fantastic because that’s unknown territory for an Australian Team. And it is fantastic. But the collective disappointment of those near misses illustrates how far we have come.”
The next games are in Milano-Cortina, Italy in 2026 and no doubt the Beijing games have inspired the next generation of snow athletes already involved in Snow Australia’s junior programs. We already have a world class training facility for mogul and aerial skiers at the water ramp at the Geoff Henke Olympic Training Centre in Brisbane while the new Airbag Jump in Jindabyne will offer year-round training for our snowboard and freeski athletes.
There’s even talk of resurrecting the halfpipe cutter Shaun White used at Perisher post-season in 2013 to prepare for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games to build an Olympic-sized SuperPipe, but as Geoff Lipshut said it is a matter of finding “somewhere where we’ve got space to put a halfpipe in and it’s shady enough that once you’ve blown the snow that you’re likely to keep the stock.”
There is also the small matter of funding, but as these games have shown, given the opportunity Australia’s snow athletes will put in the work required to succeed on the biggest stage in snow.
