Golden Kangaroo Soars to Olympic Success

February 26th, 2010

Lydia receiving her flowers at Cypress Mountain. Image – Dan Himbrechts

Lydia Lassila has confirmed her place as the world’s best female aerial skier, by winning Olympic gold at Cypress Mountain tonight.

The 28-year-old put her Olympic demons from 2006 behind her, landing two outstanding jumps in heavy fog, to win with an Olympic record total score of 214.74.

The Australian world record holder stopped a Chinese clean sweep with Li Nina second, 207.23, and Guo Xinxin claiming the bronze with 205.22 points.

Lassila couldn’t contain her excitement.

“This is the ultimate for me, it’s something that I dreamt about since I was a little girl, then as a gymnast and then as an aerialist,” Lassila said, after just getting off the phone to the Australian Prime Minister.

“Olympic gold! It was always one thing to go to an Olympics but I always knew that I had something in me – that I could do this. This is just closure to a lifetime of dedication and hard work for this very moment.”

Lassila didn’t change her pre-event jump plan and opted for the Back-Lay-Full-Full with a degree of difficulty of 3.800 – preferring to worry about herself and her own fate.

“After the first jump I was so pleased with that, to just land it. That was the focus for tonight – hit my takeoff, hit my landings.

“When I landed my second jump, that’s me you know. I gave it everything tonight and I’ve given everything my whole career. To land that jump and nail it, I’d done everything I could and whatever happened after that – whatever. But I was super self-satisfied with that moment.”

An Olympic Champion. Image – Dan Himbrechts

The tension was as thick as the fog and all 8,840 spectators held their breath. The leader after the first round China’s Xu Mengtao could have taken the gold if she had landed her triple somersault with a degree of difficulty of 4.150. However, she fell heavily and dropped back to sixth.

Xu and Lassila are the only women capable of landing the Back-Lay-Double-Full-Full. The difference tonight was that Lassila executed hers first and hung desperately onto her landing.

Jacqui Cooper, after some difficulty in training and warm-up, showed what a true champion she is to finish in fifth place.

The 37-year-old, in her fifth Olympic campaign was off the pace after her first jump scoring 90.82.

However, ‘Jumpin Jac’ stepped it up to land her Back-Full-Full-Full for a total score of 194.29 and put her in the lead momentarily. Her total would have medalled in Torino 2006 and won in 2002, 1998 and 1994.

Cooper was obviously disappointed to have missed the Olympic podium again but happy to land her toughest triple somersault and very pleased for Lassila.

“I did everything I could to put myself in a position to win a medal tonight and I’m proud of the way I competed,” Cooper whose previous best Olympic result is eighth said.

“I landed my jumps in semi-finals I landed my jumps in finals. I’ve never landed my jumps in an Olympic final before, so yay for me.

“It’s an Olympic final and people do amazing things at the Olympics. It was a big final, big jumps and I’m just so happy, obviously for Lydia winning. But there were girls doing triples and Nina even took a risk. It was great to see huge DD thrown and landed.”

Aussies cheering for the aerials girls. Image – Dan Himbrechts

Unfortunately Liz Gardner had a tough night and placed 12th. She missed her first landing and crashed heavily on her second. She was uninjured but was unable to jump to her ability in her first Olympic final.

Gardner was the first person that Lassila ran to embrace after high fiving some of the crowd.

Lassila’s gold means Vancouver 2010 is Australia’s most successful Olympic Winter Campaign adding to Torah Bright’s halfpipe gold and Dale Begg-Smith’s silver in the moguls.

Australia’s amazing record in women’s aerials continues after Alisa Camplin’s gold at Salt Lake City in 2002 and bronze in Torino.

Camplin was full of praise for Lassila.

“She is the worthiest Olympic champion,” she said

“It was always going to come down to whether Tao Tao was going to land and it it’s her first Olympics and she’s so young. Lydia stood up there with a huge amount of pressure on her back and put it down when she needed to and she just had to sit back and watch. She was the best jumper out there tonight there’s no doubt about it.

“This is when you have to come from the absolute bottom to the absolute top and Lydia worked her way up every single day with gritted teeth and it’s such a joy to see that she’s got redemption for everything she put in.”

Source – AOC