Danielle Scott has won silver in Aerial Skiing, Australia’s sixth medal at an already historic Winter Games for Australia.
I jumped the way I wanted to, and I’m so grateful for my team around me for getting me to this point. This just means everything.
In a final where the top nine skiers were all performing triple jumps, it was the highest scoring women’s aerials final in history.
Having not competed triples since 2023, Scott said she was thrilled to deliver a career-best performance on the world’s biggest stage.
“Yeah, to see 117 on the scoreboard was pretty magic. I would like to have done that in the Super Final, but I can’t get too greedy. I think today’s been an awesome day.
“I hadn’t competed triples until now. You know, it’s been a rough ride, and I just kept believing the process was going to work.
“It’s strategy as well — you’ve got to play the game sometimes, and my body has been through a lot. So I left [competing triples] to the right time and just believed that I’ve got the experience, I’ve done triples before and today was the day.”
Already a multiple World Cup winner, the Victorian Institute of Sport athlete’s previous best Olympic finish was 9th.
Scott becomes Australia’s fourth Aerial Skiing medallist, exactly 24 years to the day after Alisa Camplin won Australia’s first gold medal in the sport.
Image: Olympic champion and VIS Alumnus, Alisa Camplin AM (right), congratulates Scott after the medal presentation (credit: Chris Hocking / AOC)
That moment sparked Scott’s Olympic dream and Camplin, Australia’s Winter Olympic Chef de Mission, was the first to congratulate Scott in Livigno.
“It’s been 12 years of coming in with the Olympic dream and now finally she just does the most beautiful jumps of her life, so I couldn’t have been more happy for her,” Camplin said.
“She’s worked really hard for this, mentally and emotionally. Everyone could see that she has the most floaty, tightest, straightest, biggest, most gorgeous jumps.
I can’t tell you how much pressure is it is to be last in the start gate and to put that beautiful jump out there. She well and truly, over 12 years, over 12 months, over 12 hours, did everything possible to secure that performance and I couldn’t be more proud of her and the entire team behind her.
“That was a next level female aerial final. The number of women doing full-full-fulls and landing them… it was one of the greatest competitions of all time, for her to be silver there was outstanding.”
Abbey Willcox also qualified for final 1, finishing 10th overall with a textbook back full-double full in the 12-skier final, scoring 88.83.
“It felt so good to be out there [in an Olympic final] and land my jumps as well. It’s a dream come true,” Willcox said.
“As soon as I made the Olympic Team, it was like a weight off my shoulders, and then to go out and do this, it’s everything I really wanted to do so I feel really happy and proud of myself.”
Fellow Aussie Olympic debutants Sidney Stephens and Airleigh Frigo placed 15th and 22nd respectively in the qualification round.
Scott will have another shot at a medal in the Mixed Aerials Team event on Saturday 21 February.
