NSWIS skiers Brodie Summers and Matt Graham have had strong starts to the mogul World Cup season, Summers claiming a silver medal in the single moguls and Graham winning gold in the dual; moguls at Idre Fjäll, Sweden.
Summers, the 27-year-old from Brighton in Melbourne qualified for finals in 11th place, and put in an impressive first run in finals scoring 80.77 points to advance to the super final medal round in fourth place.
In the super final, Summers increased his score to 81.84 to finish in the silver medal position, 1.87 points behind event winner Benjamin Cavet of France. Rounding out the podium in third place was American Nick Page.
"It feels incredible to be back on the podium again”, Summers commented after the race.
"There was plenty of great skiing out there today so to do it amongst the world’s best is a phenomenal feeling.”
"I changed lines in the course this morning and it really paid off. The new line accentuated my skiing and I felt really comfortable in it, so I was able to consistently put good runs down all day long.
"My coaches and I also decided to stick with my baseline air package instead of upping the degree of difficulty. This meant I could channel the focus to quality and execution, which ultimately translated into better skiing and jumping.
"I'm really happy with how I’ve started this season. The main thing is that my skiing and jumping feels like it’s returning to the level that it was at prior to injuring myself pre-Olympics.
"I'm really grateful to have such a supportive team around me and together we are all building our capacity to perform well on the global stage.”
The performance marks the third World Cup medal of his career (2 silver, 1 bronze), and first podium since February 2017 and injury suffered before the 2018 Olympic Games in Korea.
It was a successful day for the Australian program with all NSWIS athletes reaching the top-16 finals stage.
Joining Summers in the final in the men’s event was Matt Graham in 11th, Cooper Woods-Topalovic 15th, James Matheson 16th and in the women’s event Jakara Anthony 8th and Britt Cox 15th.
For Woods-Topalovic, the PB result marked the first World Cup final of his career.
The mogul skiing athletes have one more event left in Idre, with a dual mogul competition to follow on day two.
Matt Graham has finished the year in the best possible way, winning gold in the dual mogul FIS Word Cup event.
The 2018 Olympic silver medallist had a number of impressive head to head “dual” races on the Idre course to reach the last pair of the day, before fog rolled in and forced the event to be called off due to low visibility.
Graham was set to dual home town Swedish skier Ludvig Fjallstrom for the gold, but with the final phase of the event unable to take place, both were awarded the win.
"In duals, you just have to let your hair down and go for it," said the 26-year-old from the Central Coast in New South Wales.
"I had some very challenging duals today, including coming up against my teammate Brodie Summers in the first round. He skied really well this week which gave him a well deserved silver medal yesterday in the single moguls event."
"My tactics today was to push hard out of the gate and go as big as possible on the top jump. This course is quite fast and easy compared to most World Cup courses, so you just had to land the top jump and charge the middle section as fast as possible.
"The final four men were all pretty relaxed and chilled at the top of the course waiting for the fog to hopefully clear. I was just remaining activated and ready to go, because we would not have gotten much warning if the fog cleared.
"It would have been fun to be able to finish the event and see how things would have turned out, but you can't control the weather. I was happy to share the top step of the podium with Ludvig. It is his first World Cup win, and he is a good mate of mine as we have been competing on the World Cup tour together for 10 years now."
For Graham, the result marks the 16th major medal of his career (3 gold, 6 silver, 7 bronze) and his first World Cup win since January 2017.
A number of NSWIS athletes also had strong performances, with Brodie Summers in 10th place, Cooper Woods-Topalovic another World Cup PB in 13th and James Matheson 35th.
In the women's event, 2019 World Championship silver medalist Jakara Anthony finished ninth, with 2017 World Champion Britt Cox in 13th place.
After three events, Graham now sits in third place on the World Cup standings, with teammate Brodie Summers in fifth. In the women's standings, Jakara Anthony is in ninth place with Britt Cox 14th.
The mogul skiing athletes will now return to Ruka, Finland, site of the first World Cup event of the season for an extended training block before competition resumes in late January.
