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| Lydia Lassila - Aerial Skiing |
Bio
Lydia Lassila: Reaching the pinnacle of her sport
Lydia Lassila capped off a brilliant two years of aerial skiing competition in Vancouver 2010, reaching the very top of her sport in more ways than one.
The 28-year-old AIS scholarship holder set a new Olympic record points score in winning the gold medal with a seemingly nerveless performance, becoming the fifth Australian to reach the top of an Winter Olympic podium.
Remarkably, she took the Olympic crown with a new triple twisting triple somersault that she had attempted just once before in competition.
Lassila unveiled the new jump in Deer Valley in January, just four weeks prior to the Games opening, setting a world record single jump score of 113.56 points on her way to a record total of 220.91 points.
The season before, the Mt Buller skier had broken through to win her first World Cup title, after finishing second on the end-of-season rankings or four occasions.
Following the Vancouver Games, she announced that she would take a year’s break from her sport, before returning to set her sights on Sochi 2014. If anyone deserved a little time off, she surely did.
Background
Lydia Lassila - then Ierodiaconou – and fellow former gymnast Liz Gardner were the first two members of the Flying Kangaroos to emerge from the Ski & snowboard Australia/Victorian Institute of Sport Aerials Development team.
In her first season on the World Cup circuit in 2001/02, Lydia recorded three top ten placings, the best a fifth at Mt Buller in her first competition, and she also qualified for the Salt Lake 2002 Olympics.
In the qualification round of the 2002 Games, she landed a double full tuck jump that she had never performed in competition, and then in the final, successfully performed a triple twisting double somersault that she had practiced on snow for the first time just two days earlier.
She finished eighth in the event, in her eighth world class competition, and a mere two years since she had first begun to ski.
Lydia reached the top echelon of aerial skiing faster than any woman in the history of the sport. In a remarkable 2002/2003 season, she finished second on the World Cup standings behind team-mate Alisa Camplin, in just her second year of competition. She started with a silver medal in front of her home crowd at Mt Buller in September, added podium places in Tremblant and Steamboat when the World Cup resumed in the northern hemisphere, then claimed her first victory at the end of the season in Spindleruv Mlyn, Czech Republic, in March 2003.
In the 2003/04 season she was again world number 2 behind Camplin, on the back of two victories and five other podium places in an impressive display of consistent jumping.
In 2004/05, she won the opening three events of the season, but then opted to begin jumping triples in a strategy aimed at Torino gold. Despite this, she still made the podium four times and retained the world number two ranking at the end of the season, this time behind Chinese jumper Nina Li.
Torino, of course, was not a happy experience for Lydia.
Few Australian sports fans who were watching the 2006 Games will forget her chilling screams as she blew out her knee in the aerial skiing elimination round in Sauze d'Oulx.
Lydia had gone to the Torino Games just eight months after allograft surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament of her left knee, torn in a water jump accident in Lake Placid, New York, at the beginning of June 2005.
After months in the gym, the then 23-year-old took her first jumps on snow in Canada in mid-December 2006, and a month later, capped a remarkable rehabilitation by winning the World Cup in Deer Valley.
Performing her regular routine of two triple twisting double somersaults, she scored 196.51 points to street the opposition by more than ten points.
Although she opted to miss the second Deer Valley event and another pre-Games contest in Lake Placid, she had certainly put herself into the medal mix for Torino.
Unfortunately it was not to be. In third place on 101.52 points after the first round of qualification, behind team-mate Jacqui Cooper and Chinese skier Xinxin Guo, she landed awkwardly in the second round of jumping and her Games were over.
Following Torino, Lydia had another knee reconstruction, and reacquainted herself with the gymnasium at the Victorian Institute of sport.
After an extensive rehabilitation through 2007 – and mid-year wedding to former Finnish moguls skier Lauri Lassila – she completed a brilliant return to World Cup aerial skiing in December 2007, making the podium in the opening round of the season in Lianhua Mountain, China.
Jumping at the highest level for the first time since blowing her knee out in the Torino 2006 qualification round, Lydia grabbed silver behind Jacqui Cooper, then followed up a day later with a fifth placing.
And that was just the start of her season.
After a fourth in Lake Placid, she was back on the podium again in Mont Gabriel, this time for a bronze, but with a 100-plus single jump points score and a 200-plus total score.
A tenth in Deer Valley was followed by another podium, a silver on the Vancouver 2010 jump site of Cypress Mountain in another quinella with team-mate Cooper.
An 18th in Inawashiro after missing the landing on her first jump, then a tenth in Moscow, left her in fourth place on the World Cup standings with only the final in Davos to come.
And once again the Digger’s Rest aerialist stood up, claiming silver for her fourth podium for the season, and in the process climbing back to the world number two ranking behind Cooper.
It was the fourth time that Lassila had ended the season as number two, and the third time in six years that Australia had achieved the women’s aerial skiing quinella.
Lydia’s 2008/09 season was a mixture of podium appearances – two victories and another bronze medal – and also three placings outside the top ten as she again worked to develop a new routine of triple somersaults in place of her regulation triple twisting doubles.
A training schedule disrupted by poor snow and bad weather had also affected her preparation, and she went into the final event of the season in Moscow just nine points ahead of her nearest rival, Li Nina of China, with the title on the line.
Competing on a man-made structure in the grounds of Moscow University, the then 27-year-old AIS/OWI skier landed both her triple twisting double somersaults for a total of 192.11 points, finishing third behind Chinese skier Xu Mengtao (195.980) and Cheng Shuang (192.81).
Most importantly, Li was back in fifth position on 177.48 points after missing the landing on her opening jump and scoring just 77.37 points.
The Australian finished with 360 points, 24 clear of her Chinese opponent.
It made her the fourth Australian woman to win the World Cup title, following Kirstie Marshall (1992), Jacqui Cooper (’99, ‘00, ‘01, ’07, ’08) and Alisa Camplin (’03, ’04), and gave Australia its eighth World Cup season title in 11 years. |
Details
- NickName: Lyd
- Date of Birth: 17-Jan-82
- Age: 26
- Place of Birth: Melbourne
- Birth State: Victoria
- Birth Country: Australia
- Residence City: Melbourne
- Residence State: Victoria
- Residence Country: Australia
- Height: 157 cm
- Weight: 54 kg
- Education: B of Appl Science, Human Movement
- Club/resort: Team Buller/Mt Buller
- Coach: Mich Roth
- First Participated: 1998
- Years On National Team: 6
- Career Highlights: Ranked number 2 overall World Cup, '03,'04,'05,'08
8th Salt Lake City Olympics.
- Personal Sponsors: Bolle, ID One
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Human Interest
Hobbies/Interests:
Golf, surfing, skiing, movies, music, shopping and entertaining
Your ultimate holiday destination:
Thailand
I would never leave home without my:
Computer, Bolle Sunnies!
What one talent do you wish you had?
Singing voice
Heroes/Role Models:
Bono, Agassi, Tiger Woods
Personal Goals apart from your sport:
Further my education in Business/Marketing.
Develop my business, Body Sphere. |
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