Lydia Lassila Wins Deer Valley With A New World-Record Score

Australia’s Lydia Lassila takes a win and a world record under the lights in Deer Valley with a triple twisting triple and a double twisting triple, producing a world-record score of 220.91. Jacqui Cooper held the record previously with 219.81. With a healthy lead after qualification, jumping a lay-double full-full and scoring 113.56, Lydia came back for the night time finals all business, throwing down another triple, a lay-full-full for a 107.35 and a total score of 220.91 almost 14 points in front of Chinese rival Mengtao Xu with 207 points. China dominated the next five positions. Clearly the Chinese women’s team is looking to wear some hardware around their necks come Vancouver.

Return of a legendHeading for her fifth Olympic Games, Australia’s Jacqui Cooper made her first World Cup of the season in Deer Valley. It would appear Cooper’s plan this season has been focused on being primed for Vancouver. By missing the first leg of the World Cup events to train and prepare, Jacqui treated Deer Valley as just more warm up, she held back her triples and stuck to throwing doubles. Nevertheless, the judges loved her full-full and lay-full and due to high form points on both jumps she managed to place seventh just behind the Chinese line up. If Jacqui’s triples are as clean and true as her doubles the Chinese have reason to be nervous.Other Australian women include veteran Elizabeth Gardner. A slight injury while training before the World Cup in China, means Deer Valley is Liz’s first comp of the season. She scored reasonably high form and landing points on a single twisting double, lay-full but missed out on qualifying for finals, settling for 19th place just in front of teammate Bree Munro in 20th.

Australia’s David Morris qualifies for finals
The real story from Deer Valley is David Morris. The top twelve men from qualification rounds went on to the night finals. Morris landed himself in just that position sticking his triple twisting triple, a full-full-full with some of the highest landing points of the comp. With the pressure on Morris backed up his performance with a very solid lay-full-full, pulling himself up to finish the night in ninth position with a respectable total of 223.78. Maybe not yet on par with likes of winner Anton Kushnir from Belorussia with two quad twisting triples for an impressive total score of 264.05, but Morris has again confirmed he’s in his element. Once David’s degree of difficulty increases it appears he’ll be bringing Australian men’s aerials back to the stage.

Next week the tour moves on to Lake Placid, USA and the following week will go to Mt. Gabriel, CAN to witness the last aerial World Cup before the Vancouver Olympics.

Words: Don St.Pierre
Photo: Getty Images

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