LIVIGNO: Jakara Anthony could barely comprehend what had just happened after a devastating fall in the super final cruelly ended her hopes of winning back-to-back moguls gold medals.
The Australian superstar had been in superb touch throughout the competition, blitzing her rivals in the first final to top qualification for the super final by a whopping 3.83 points, cementing the 27-year-old as the red-hot favourite to repeat her achievement from Beijing 2022.
That script was torn up when Anthony stumbled on a mogul soon after landing her trick on the top air as she chased the super final’s top score of 82.30 – more than one point less than the sizzling 83.96 the Aussie had put down in the first final.
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“I’m bummed obviously,” Anthony told media, including Wide World of Sports, minutes after the shock result.
“I’m really proud of the skiing I was able to do on the course. I think I was skiing and jumping at such a high level and skiing with good speed and I think I really had what it took to take that top step (of the podium). I showed that in the first couple of rounds but just didn’t put it down in that last one when it counted.”
Anthony said she would need to watch the tape to get a sense for how she made the mistake but her initial analysis was that she lunged for the mogul and lost her form.
She admitted that she was more nervous than usual as she waited at the top for her run, knowing that her best skiing would almost certainly deliver her back-to-back Olympic gold medals.
“Instinctively you kind of want to stretch your foot to a mogul to get control, but you don’t want to do that. I think that’s what I did in there. I’ve got to process it a bit first to kind of go over that,” she said.
While Anthony has a reputation for being the cleanest moguls skier in the world, her super final fall wasn’t her first in competition over the last 12 months.
Having missed the 2024/25 season due to a collarbone injury, she had a misstep that was similar to her Livigno crash in one of her first events back.
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Jakara Anthony stumbles during the women’s freestyle skiing moguls super final at Milano Cortina 2026. AP
“I actually did my first run like that in the first World Cup this season in Ruka (Finland),” she said. “I blew out of the course for the first time in a World Cup. So, it’s not the first, it probably won’t be the last, it’s just the nature of our sport.”
Anthony fronted to up to her media commitments with incredible grace considering she was speaking so soon after her biggest disappointment of her career.
Australia will undoubtedly wake up in disbelief, given the heavy favouritism she carried into the final and Nine’s commentators were as shocked as anyone by Anthony’s crash as they watched it unfold.
“Oh no, she is out of the course,” Anthony’s former teammate Britt Cox said in the call.
“I have no words,” Cox added.
“I’ve never seen – she caught that outside edge ever so slightly. I don’t know what happened there.”
Alongside Cox, Todd Woodbridge described the “devastation” that struck the large contingent of Australians in the crowd, including Anthony’s parents and friends.
“Everyone is speechless,” he said.
“This is absolute devastation for Jakara Anthony.”
Anthony’s father, Darren, was stunned by the result, saying he thought the gold medal was “a done deal” after watching his daughter master the Livigno course in her first two runs of the competition.
“No matter what the result is, we are so proud of her,” he added, speaking to Nine.
“It has been very special being here.”
Anthony’s mother Sue said “there is always next time” adding that no skier could afford to make mistakes in an Olympic super final and expect to win a medal.
France’s Perrine Laffont reacts to clinching bronze after Jakara Anthony’s botched super final run. AP
Fortunately for the Beijing 2022 gold medallist, her next opportunity isn’t four years away like it usually would be. For the first time, the dual moguls has been added to the program at Milano Cortina, pitting two skiers against each other in a race down the course that is complicated by the scoring of the two jumps or “airs”.
Anthony will again start among the favourites for gold in that event, starting on Saturday night (AEDT) and she said she would learn from her mistake in a bid for redemption.
“It’s kind of nice that we’ve got the dual moguls, I’ve been saying it’s not four years to wait for the next opportunity, it’s only three days, so definitely looking forward to that but I’m sure there’ll be a few girls out there looking for redemption,” she said.
“I’ve definitely learnt some stuff from skiing it today but I’m still really happy with my process going into this comp and I still really think I had what it took and we’ll just be going into dual moguls making a few adjustments because that’s a little bit different, a bit more speed dependent and stuff, but yeah, shift the focus and see what we can do.”
USA cashed in on Anthony’s fall, winning gold and silver with Elizabeth Lemley putting down an exceptional run to win with a score of 82.30, while Jaelin Kauf secured second place with 80.77. Rounding out the podium was French skier Perrin Laffont, who was the last-placed qualifier for the super final but improved to post a 78.00.
Australia’s Charlotte Wilson had an excellent day after falling in her first qualification run, posting two exceptional runs to qualify for the super final and finishing sixth with a score of 75.17.
Wilson, 20, was disappointed for Anthony but over the moon about her own performance.
“It’s pretty exciting,” she said, “definitely not what I was anticipating at the start of the day but it just got better and better.
“I think I just had my head in the right space, I was focusing more on the skiing and less about the atmosphere and the outcome, and that really worked for me a lot today.”
Anthony was the only athlete to fall on the second day of competition, with 29 clean runs put down before she took the course for the final run. She got up after the fall and skied to the bottom, officially finishing in eighth place with a 60.81.