Sunshine state offers some bright hopes
IT is hard not to think of the Disney film Cool Runnings when pondering Australia’s delegation to the Winter Games.
If ever there was a squad worthy of comparison to the 1993 comedy about the 1988 Jamaican bobsleigh team, surely it is Australia.
There’s a luge hopeful from tropical Townsville in 22-yearold Alexander Ferlazzo; Deanna Lockett, 22, is a short track skating star who wants her home town of Ipswich known for more than Pauline Hanson; and Jaclyn Narracott, 27, will continue the trend of Queenslanders trading the sunshine state for snow when she competes in skeleton in temperatures below freezing.
While Australia is a Winter Olympics minnow, five-time Aussie Winter Olympian Jacqui Cooper said it could no longer fly under the radar.
“It’s not like in the 1990s when I showed up and they played the Austrian anthem,” she said.
A slew of recent success from Australian athletes after decades in the wilderness sees us boast five gold, three silver and four bronze medals before this month’s Games began.
Aerial skiing royalty Cooper said that tally could be dwarfed by the time the Games wrap up on February 25.
Australia has five aerial skiers and she reckons three could bring home a medal, citing Sydney’s Danielle Scott, Victorian David Morris and Canberra’s Laura Peel.