Aerials, Women

Australian Jacqui Cooper was to be heavily favored, having led the World Cup in 1999, 2000, and 2001. But the week before the competition, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and could not compete. This left the event wide open. Cooper’s Australian teammate, Alisa Camplin, was a former gymnast with great ability on her jumps, but was noted to be a rather mediocre skier for this level of competition. She placed second in the qualifying round behind Switzerland’s Evelyne Leu, who set a world best with her qualifying total of 203.16. But Leu had difficulty in the final with two poor landings and would finish only 11th. On the first jump of the final, the leader was Olga Koroleva (RUS) followed by Belarussian Alla Tsuper, with Camplin in third. But Koroleva and Tsuper fell back in the second round, as their jumps had low degree of difficulty. The Russian officials did not agree, and protested Koroleva’s low scores, to no avail. This left it open for Camplin, who again placed third in the second round, trailing Canadians Deidra Dionne and Veronica Brenner. But that was sufficient to get the gold medal for Camplin, with Brenner the silver medalist, and Dionne winning bronze. This was Australia’s second ever Winter Olympic gold, only a few days after Steven Bradbury’s surprise win in short-track speedskating.