Aerial Skiing
Laura Peel has produced the highest scoring jump of the season to win gold at the World Cup aerial skiing event in Le Relais, Canada.
The double World Champion was again the only female competitor to jump spectacular triple back somersaults, scoring a huge 109.15 points with her lay-full-full jump to record the eighth World Cup victory of her career.
Second place went to American Ashley Caldwell who scored 93.06 points, with Ukrainian Anastasiya Novosad rounding out the podium in third with 90.59 points.
Peel’s teammate Danielle Scott also had a strong event and was unlucky not to land on the podium in fourth place. Scott had the highest scoring jumps in both qualifications and the first round of finals, and in the super final medal round scored 89.18 with her triple twisting double back somersault to just miss the podium by 1.41 points.
“I am so happy and honestly a bit relieved” said Peel, the 33-year-old from Canberra.
“It was a really tough start to the season, I wasn’t jumping how I wanted to in the competition, but I had been training well, and today I was able to do my training jumps in the competition, and I am so happy and just really relieved as well.”
“The plan doesn’t really change, keep working hard and doing my jumps, building my degree of difficulty and I just want to keep executing jumps like that every day.”
Also in action for Australia was Airleigh Frigo, who qualified for her first ever World Cup final, and recorded a personal best finish of 12th.
Read MORE | Snow Australia // Image Credit: FIS/Mateusz Kielpinski
Snowboarding
Australian snowboarder Scotty James has won silver in the Men’s Snowboard Halfpipe World Cup in Laax, Switzerland over the weekend, after poor visibility resulted in the night-time final being cancelled, with results from the qualification round used to determine the final placings.
Heading into the event wearing the yellow leaders bib as the number one ranked rider, James was again impressive with two high quality runs in qualifying, with his highest scoring run coming in run two, with a huge score of 95 points.
Finishing just ahead of James by just 0.25 points in first place was Ruka Hirano from Japan, with his teammate Yuto Totskua rounding out the podium in third scoring 91.50.
Hockey
The Kookaburras scored a resounding 9-2 victory over South Africa to cement top spot in Pool A and book direct passage to the World Cup quarter finals. The team includes VIS scholarship holders Nathan Ephraums and Johan Durst.
South Africa scored a late consolation through a stunning tomahawk strike from Tevin Kok, but it was job done for the Kookaburras as they look ahead to a knockout quarter final in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday 24 January at 10pm AEDT.
“It feels good to get that top spot and have maximum time to get ready for a quarter final,” said Govers.
“It was a good start to the game. When you get an easy touch like that for the first goal it kind of flowed on from there. I probably should have got a few more but will have to settle on four.”
“Reflecting on the performance, I think we can take out how quickly we can be dominant and maintain it. Then when do we keep going and when do we stop and start holding onto possession a bit more to make it a bit easier on our legs.”
Netball
The Origin Australian Diamonds have gone two from two in Cape Town after sealing a second win of the Quad Series with a 59-57 victory over the Silver Ferns.
Diamonds captain Liz Watson was impressive as always, particularly in the third quarter where she had 12 feeds and six goal assists.
The Australians took a one goal lead into the last.
Wood really stood up in that last quarter, sinking long bombs and helping the Diamonds out to their biggest lead of the night - five goals.
You can never rule out the Ferns though, they clawed the margin back to just two goals in the dying moments, making the Diamonds fight until the end to seal their second win of the series.
The Australians have a day off to recover before facing South Africa in front of their home crowd on Wednesday (3am AEDT).
