Beijing Winter Olympic moguls champion, Jakara Anthony, has thrown down the competition gauntlet, qualifying first for the mogul finals tomorrow with a score of 81.65.
The current FIS World Cup yellow bib leader for both singles and duals moguls performed a cork 7 mute on the top air and a back x on the bottom.
“My goal was I wanted to get through in Q1 today,” said Anthony.”
“Four years ago I was in the best place I’ve ever been and I’d say now it’s equivalent, hopefully a step up, I’d say I feel just as good as the last games.”
Anthony joins her team mate, Matt Graham, as Australia’s two mogul skiers to qualify in first run for the finals. Remaining Aussie team mogul skiers, Cooper Woods, Jackson Harvey, George Murphy, Charlotte Wilson and Emma Bosco all have a second opportunity tomorrow to qualify for the finals.
Thirty skiers hit the moguls course today in both men and women’s competition, with the top 10 heading straight to finals. The remaining have a second qualification round to determine the next top 10. Then the field of 20 compete for a top 8 position in the super finals.
Graham, who is currently second on the FIS World Cup leaderboard, scraped into the finals, taking the 10th position with a score of 75.77 and, in his words “a lot of room to improve.”
“I just got a little bit out of time and out of rhythm in the middle section and then a little bit hung up on the last turn into the bottom air, so look, not my finest and a lot of room to improve,” said the 31-year-old.
“The moguls are a little catchy, so you’ve really just got to be in time and in sync with the bumps, but yeah, unfortunately I just made a few mistakes.”
Canadian mogul legend, Mikael Kingsbury, took third qualifying position with Japan’s Ikuma Hiroshima taking pole position in front of Julien Viel from Canada.
*feature image, Jakara Anthony, AOC/Hocking
