OUR SNOW GUN
Jakara’s Winter Olympic dream comes true early
BARWON Heads moguls skier Jakara Anthony admits her Winter Olympic Games selection has come four years earlier than expected.
The 19-year-old prodigy will live out a lifelong dream when she represents Australia at PyeongChang next month, after she was yesterday named in the national squad of 45.
Anthony sits 14th in the world and is Australia’s second-best moguls skier behind world champion Britteny Cox. She will represent Australia in the freestyle mogul skiing.
Born in Cairns, Anthony moved to Barwon Heads at a young age and took up snow sports.
She nearly gave her skiing career away at age 10 to pursue a snow- boarding career, but her decision to stick with the moguls has paid off earlier than she ever thought.
Talking from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where her team is having its final training camp before it heads to South Korea, Anthony described her selection as a “dream come true”.
“Everything is feeling a bit more real now and my dream is finally coming true,” Anthony told the Gee- long Advertiser. “The focus for me was more Beijing in 2022, but it’s really awesome that I’ve qualified earlier than I was aiming for.
“I’m very excited now that it’s all confirmed.”
Anthony is a past winner of the Geelong Advertiser Junior Sports Star of the Year Award and is a product of the Barwon Sports Academy.
Anthony has spent the past month-and-a-half competing on the World Cup tour in Finland (12th), China (14th and 21st), Canada (26th and 13th) and the US, where she returned a personal-best fifth, and 12th, at Deer Valley, Utah.
“I’m very pleased with how the last year of preparation has gone for me,” Anthony said.
“We’ve spent the year working on different bits and pieces at all of our different camps and put it all together for the World Cup season.
“The approach we took seems to have paid off.”
Those World Cup results have influenced her selection in the Australian team, which makes its way to South Korea ahead of the opening ceremony on February 9.
“It will be an honour and a dream come true to represent Australia at the Olympics,” she said.
“Each event from this season and the previous one counted towards qualifying for the games. I just had to keep trying to execute my runs to the best of my ability in order to keep up my results. This has been a goal of mine since I was a little kid.”
Barwon Sports Academy chief executive Cameron Loftus lauded Anthony on her selection.
“It’s just outstanding to see a young talent come through the BSA as a 14-year-old and reach her ultimate goal of representing Australia at the Winter Olympics,” Loftus said.
“It’s Barwon Sports Academy’s first Winter Olympian. She joins Damien Birkinhead, our first Olympian, and we’ve had a number of Paralympians, so it’s great to see the talent coming through our region.”
ONE of Australia’s most successful Winter Olympians, snowboarder Torah Bright, has been left out of the PyeongChang Games team.
World champions Britt Cox (moguls) and Scotty James (snowboard half-pipe) will lead the charge, alongside world No. 1 in snowboard cross Alex Pullin and Sochi aerials medallists Lydia Lassila and David Morris.
Lassila, one of the 17 team members to win a medal in the 2017-18 winter season with gold and silver at a World Cup event last weekend, has been confirmed for her fifth games.
Snowboarders Belle Brockhoff (cross) and Jessica Rich (slopestyle) and freeskier Russ Henshaw have been selected but their participation is subject to medical clearance.
Emily Arthur and Holly Crawford, who’s set to compete at her fourth Games, have claimed the two spots in the women’s half-pipe allocated to Australia ahead of Bright.
The 31-year-old’s omission comes after a last-ditch bid for qualification, with her 15th and eighth placings in recent World Cup events not enough. Bright, who has Olympic gold and silver medals, has hardly competed since Sochi 2014.