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| Jacqui Cooper - Aerial Skiing |
Bio
Jacqui Cooper: The greatest winner of all time
Jacqui Cooper’s effort in finishing fifth at the Vancouver 2010 was one of the most courageous and impressive performances in Australian winter sports history.
Cooper went into the Games seriously underdone in her preparation as a result of injuries to both a hip and a knee, the 37-year-old veteran missing an extended period of water-jump and on-snow training during the pre-Olympic year.
She also missed three of the season’s six lead-up events, so to land her two finals jumps at Cypress Mountain in the way she did was remarkable.
At Vancouver Cooper became the first Australian woman to attend five Winter Games, and moved into second place behind Colin Coates (six Games) in total Winter Games team selections.
A season earlier, 2008/09, Cooper became the first Australian skier to win medals at three World Championships, adding a bronze in Inawashiro to the bronze she had won two years earlier in Madonna di Campiglio and the gold she won ten years earlier in Meiringen.
She also continues to hold the record for the most number of World Cup wins with 24.
Background
Jacqui Cooper produced the best season of her career in 2007/08, winning five events and collecting an additional silver medal on the way to her fifth World Cup aerial skiing title.
She ended the season with 24 World Cup victories, seven ahead of the next most prolific winner in the history of the sport.
Appropriately, she was named the Snowsports Athlete of the Year by Ski and Snowboard Australia at the annual awards in May, capping off a superb year for the aerial skiing veteran.
No other aerial skier man or woman has won five titles, and only one other freestyler, American moguls champion Donna Weinbrecht, has achieved the extraordinary feat.
With five titles, Cooper has also joined a small but illustrious group of Australian sporting stars who have won five or more world titles, including rower James Tomkins (7), surfer Layne Beachley (6), sailors Iain Murray (6) and Darren Bundock (9), motor cyclist Mick Doohan (5), squash player Heather Mackay (16 consecutive British Open championships) and the legendary Walter Lindrum, who won the world professional billiards championship in 1933 and held it until his retirement in 1950.
Cooper has had a remarkable career. She made her first podium more than eleven years ago, in March 1997, winning silver in Meiringen. The following season she won her first World Cup, in Breckenridge in January 1998, just prior to the Nagano Olympics
Jacqui Cooper was spotted on a trampoline by (current OWI CEO) Geoff Lipshut in 1989, and invited to try her hand at aerial skiing.
She began her competitive career at the 1991World Freestyle Championships in February 1991 in Lake Placid, New York State, finishing in 18th place, and skied her first World Cup the following season in March 1992 in Inawashiro, placing 15th.
But four days later, in the Japanese resort of Madarao, she showed the first glimpse of the jumper she would become, finishing in sixth place.
Cooper’s extraordinary Olympic story began at the Lillehammer Olympic Games in 1994, where she finished in 16th place, her equal worst result for the season.
But she bounced back the following week to equal the best result of her career to that point, a fifth placing.
Over the next three seasons she produced several top six placings, but it was not until March 1997 that she collected her first medal, a silver in Meiringen, Switzerland.
Cooper went to the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics the following season as one of the favourites after a string of World Cup results that read bronze, silver, silver, gold – the latter the first of her career. But she crashed out of the event in the qualifying round, missing the final and recording 23rd position.
In a familiar scenario, she was back at the top of her game two weeks later, winning in Chatel and Meiringen and finishing the season as the World Cup runner-up.
Cooper was the dominant female aerial skier for the next three seasons, winning the World Cup title three times in a row and also taking the 1999 World Championship crown.
In a remarkable run of 27 events, she won 13 gold medals, five silver and a bronze, finishing outside the top six just four times.
As a result, she went to the Salt Lake 2002 Olympics as the raging hot favourite, but a training accident in the week before the competition put her out of the Games with a shattered knee.
The veteran skier was out of action for two and a half years in the wake of the Salt Lake 2002 injury, making a successful return to competition at the 2004 Mt Buller World Aerials. And she returned in brilliant style, winning the silver medal behind team-mate Lydia Ierodiaconou in the season-opening event.
At the time, she was still only part way through the process of re-building her world-beating routine, performing double somersaults rather than her trademark triples, but she executed them superbly, not only making the podium, but also achieving a vital qualifying standard for Torino 2006 Olympic selection.
Over the course of the 2004/05 season, she concentrated on double somersaults, opting to try one of her triple routines just once, at the site of her 2002 crash in Deer Valley. At the Olympic test event in Sauze d’Oulx she injured her back in a training crash but after two weeks of injections, she managed to finish in seventh place in Spindleruv Mlyn – on the back of just three training jumps – then fifth in the final event of the World Cup season in Madonna di Campiglio. She ended the year in fifth place on the standings, pipped for fourth by just one point by Russian Anna Zukal.
Cooper injured her shoulder in training for the World Championships in Finland at the end of the 2004/05 season, missing the final and returning home for surgery in April.
After three months of rehabilitation, she rejoined her team-mates for water jump training in Lake Placid at the end of June, then made yet another comeback from injury at the 2005 Mt Buller World Aerials, performing single and double twisting double somersaults..
In the lead-up to the Torino Games, she contested three World Cup events, getting the chance to perform just two triple somersaults in competition. In the end, that proved to be not enough, as another heart-wrenching chapter in her Olympic journey unfolded.
The three-time World Cup champion established a new points score record of 213.36 in the Torino elimination round, smashing the previous record of team-mate Alisa Camplin by what was in aerial skiing terms a massive six points.
In the final, when she seemed on the verge of gold medal glory, she produced two jumps that were superb in the air, but she missed both landings, ending in eighth place.
Although the results were a massive disappointment, the qualifying jumps were a remarkable performance for an athlete who was still refining her technique after three years out of the sport.
Proving that she was still a force to be reckoned with, Cooper repeated her usual post-Olympic turnaround, winning gold in the Davos World Cup event immediately after the Games and increasing her career victories to 16, one short of the record jointly held by Canadian skier Marie-Claud Asselin and fellow Australian athlete Kirstie Marshall.
Cooper started the 2006/07 season with four specific goals – to win the World Cup title, to set a new world record points score, to become the greatest female aerial skiing winner in history and to win the World Championship title.
With three victories and one silver medal, she became the first woman to win four aerial skiing World Cup globes, and also cemented her place as the greatest winner of all time on 19 victories.
Along the way, she smashed her own existing points score records, posting a new women's single jump record score of 116.64 in Mont Gabriel then gathering a massive 219.91 points on her way to victory at the Salt Lake Olympic aerials site in Deer Valley.
Only the World Championship title eluded her, the then 34-year-old veteran having to 'settle for' bronze. It was a remarkable comeback to the very pinnacle of the sport, after the injuries and disappointments that have marked her career. |
Details
- NickName: Jac
- Date of Birth: 01-Jun-73
- Place of Birth: Melbourne
- Birth State: Victoria
- Birth Country: Australia
- Residence Place: Beaumaris
- Residence City: Melbourne
- Residence State: Victoria
- Residence Country: Australia
- Height: 174 cm
- Weight: 64 kg
- Education: VCE
- Club/resort: Team Buller/Mt Buller
- Institute/Academy: AIS/VIS
- First Participated: 16
- Years On National Team: 15
- Career Highlights: - 24 World Cup victories
- World Record holder (2007 Deer Valley World Cup - 219.81 points)
- World Champion 1999
- World Cup Champion 1999, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2008
- World Cup Overall Champion 1999, 2000, 2001
- Personal Sponsors: LaTrobe Financial, Bolle, 2XU, IDone, Mary Kay Cosmetics
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Human Interest
Hobbies/Interests:
Working with the Australian Olympic Committee as a key presenter for the anti-drug campaign "live clean, play clean".
I also visit schools around Australia educating kids about healthy living and being active.
I love public speaking; from major corporations to preps in primary schools!
I enjoy spending as much time as I can at home with my Fiancé; Mario. I love my family, my cat (Oscar), beach holidays, drinking coffee and going out for breakfast on Sundays.
Favourite movie:
Love Actually, Miracle, Without Limits
Your ultimate holiday destination:
The Amalfi Coast; Italy
I would never leave home without my:
Travel pillow and sleep machine (sounds like rain on a tin roof)
What is your motto?
Never put off to tomorrow, what you can do today!
What is your greatest fear?
Injury
Favourite form of exercise:
A combination of weights and cardio
Exercise/Drill you hate:
Chin ups
What would be your ideal job outside of your sport?
Anything that has me connecting with people
What one talent do you wish you had?
To make myself invisible
Person you would most like to meet:
Oprah
Heroes/Role Models:
Oprah
Personal Goals apart from your sport:
To raise a family (hopefully twins) with Mario, and to live happily ever after |
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