{"id":475699,"date":"2026-02-12T19:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T19:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475699\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T19:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T19:28:11","slug":"cooper-woods-reveals-john-eales-mentoring-behind-gold-medal-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475699\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper Woods reveals John Eales\u2019 mentoring behind gold medal win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eales shared his strategy with Woods when the two linked up in 2022, when the latter was awarded a scholarship through the Sport Australia Hall of Fame mentoring program.<\/p>\n

Then a budding skier with unrealised Olympic dreams, Woods said it was a huge part of how he pulled off his miraculous victory at Milano Cortina 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been pretty fortunate to work with some pretty amazing people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Eales is a wonderful guy. That was something he introduced to me, to help me align myself and get myself ready to compete. We actually communicated just before the qualification one, and I told him that I was still running the same things that we did back then, with the cues … [it\u2019s] something I\u2019ve taken to a lot of high-pressure moments, where it gives me a sense of time and presence and discipline. It\u2019s just life advice in major moments like that. I\u2019m very thankful to have John in my corner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woods, of course, adapted the Eales method to his chosen pursuit, which is about as far away from rugby as imaginable. But the big building blocks of greatness don\u2019t change; only the skills and the setting.<\/p>\n

And it helps explain why Woods reacted the way he did when he received his gold medal<\/a> on the podium: by yelling \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d at the top of his lungs. Those words have a deeper meaning.<\/p>\n

\"Cooper<\/p>\n

Cooper Woods goes bananas after posting his winning score.Credit: AP<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of his three steps: \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d is what he says to fire himself up when he pushes out each time he skis. It may as well now be his trademark.<\/p>\n

\u201cWords of affirmation and positivity,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018You\u2019ve got this. You believe this. This is your moment. Let\u2019s not hold back, and actually show the world what we can do.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially being Australian; we\u2019re a summer destination, we should be kicking the feet out back of Bondi. Here we are, taking charge in Italy \u2026 we\u2019re a dominant nation in winter sport. We\u2019re not just here to joke around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

The exact order of his three steps are a little harder to identify; Woods was so frazzled in his post-ceremony press conference, so spun out by the fact he was Australia\u2019s newest Olympic great, so stunned by the gold medal he had pulled out from the fire, that he initially referred to Eales as a rugby league player before correcting himself when his faux-pax was pointed out to him.<\/p>\n

But Woods did give us this: \u201cI close my eyes and I go through my run \u2026 and remember every little point of the journey down the run, because that helps me be present.\u201d The words of affirmation, we think, come last.<\/p>\n

Job done. Thanks, Ealesy.<\/p>\n

The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.<\/p>\n

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eales shared his strategy with Woods when the two linked up in 2022, when the latter was awarded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-475699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}