Tess Coady has put the seal on Australia’s record-breaking freestyle ski and snowboard world championships, soaring to their sixth medal on the final day of competition in Bakuriani.
The 22-year-old snowboard star from Melbourne ended the championships on Saturday by grabbing a bronze in the spectacular Big Air event after daring to dare with a trick she hadn’t even performed in training at the Georgian winter resort.
Coady had just missed the podium earlier in the championships when she finished fourth in the snowboard slopestyle, the same event at which she’d won bronze at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
But she again demonstrated her big event temperament on Saturday when she attempted a Back-1080-Indi on her first attempt, having not even practised the trick in Bakuriani.
She backed this up with a clean Front-9-Tailgrab to earn a total score of 153.25, which left her eight points adrift of silver medalist, Japan’s Miyabi Onitsuka (161.25) and nine-and-a-quarter points behind Austria’s double Olympic champion Anna Gasser (162.50)
It was a timely major breakthrough for Coady – her first podium in the Big Air at either a World Cup event or the world championships.
The bronze also ensured the biggest-ever medal haul for Australia at any freestyle ski and snowboard world championships, their four silvers and two bronze eclipsing the team’s five-medal hauls of 2017 and 2011.
It also put them joint-sixth on the medal table in terms of the number of medals won.
Valentino Guseli had clinched silver in the snowboard halfpipe, just as Josie Baff did in the snowboard cross and skier Danielle Scott in the aerials.
Matt Graham was the man of the championships for the Aussies, finishing second in the individual moguls while also taking bronze in the dual moguls, despite having to ski with a fractured collarbone which will require surgery later this month.
On the final day, Gasser remained the queen of the Big Air, always in control once she launched herself into the lead after the first run (87.75) to ensure Austria headed the medal table with 13 gongs, including three gold.
With her title from Georgia, Gasser now has two world titles as well as three X-Games titles (2018, 2019 and 2020) in her best event, while she also won silver in the slopestyle at the 2015 world championships.
