AIS/NSWIS Mogul Skier Britt Cox has built on her finals performance at the opening World Cup of the year to take out victory on day one at the US Selection event in Steamboat, Colorado, USA.

The US Selection events feature strong development level skiers from the USA, who are all competing for a start in the US World Cups. A number of international athletes also compete in the event as it serves as a high quality event early in the international season.

Cox had an outstanding day, qualifying in first place for the final and was able to replicate another leading score to take victory.

Joining Britt in the women's final was AIS/NSWIS team-mate Nicole Parks, who made the final in her first event of the season. Nicole showed some promising pieces in her run and as the season develops will have the opportunity to put the whole run together.

AIS Mogul Skiing Coach Steve Desovich was pleased with the winning performance of his young athlete.

"Britt skied consistently today and continued with her fine jumping and overall skiing."

"We are especially pleased she executed two consecutive runs at close to her current capacity."

Matt Graham also performed very well, narrowly missing out on the podium in fifth place.

Coach Desovich was also happy with Matt's performance, where a slightly different race strategy, being slightly more conservative was employed.

"Matt was able to achieve some key objectives in today’s event. We look forward to continuing the process of trying to achieve consistent performances throughout the season."

Two more events are scheduled to take place in Steamboat, another moguls event on December 21 and a dual mogul event on December 22.

Australian teenager Britt Cox delivered a career best performance while making her first World Cup moguls skiing singles final in Ruka, Finland.

In the opening event to the 2011/2012 freestyle World Cup season, which heralded the introduction of a new points format with qualifying and finals, the tenacious 17-year-old finished 14th in a quality field of 33 women.

The event was won by America’s current Olympic gold medalist and former world champion Hannah Kearney, who backed up her win in the season opener in Ruka last year, ahead of compatriot Eliza Outtrim and Czech veteran Nikola Sudova.

Giving away valuable international experience and physical development to almost the entire field in the final, Cox, who is in the second year of her Australian Institute of Sport / NSW Institute of Sport scholarship, delivered a resounding performance with her jumps but with a speed of 27.04 seconds down the infamous 213-metre Battery Run, she was unable to finish higher in the results.

With Kearney’s time of 24.70 second and a course pace time of 25.97 seconds, Cox and AIS mogul skiing program head coach Steve Desovich know exactly what two things the teenager from Victoria’s Mount Beauty needs to work on to take her career to its potential.

“As a coach you always push harder and harder for more but the fact that she made the final for the first time meant that her performance was a solid grade today,” a pleased Desovich said.
“There are ongoing issues to work on to be a top 10. She has a way to go with speed but as she gets older she will get stronger.”

The need for speed is also immediately acknowledged by Cox and in fact she threw caution to the wind at some stages in Ruka but this was at a cost of technical efficiency.

In the men’s event, another Australian teenager, Matt Graham missed the final but finished in 26th place in a field of 51 athletes. This was also a personal best World Cup performance for Matt, improving on his World Cup debut result of 27th in 2010.

Canadian Mikael Kingsbury was victorious, ahead of American Sho Kashima and Frenchman Anthony Benna.

Desovich said that he was pleased with Graham’s qualifying run and like Cox, he needs to work on speed.

Graham pushed hard throughout his qualifying run but his lack of World Cup experience resulted in a mistake which saw the 17-year-old from Gosford in NSW, miss a jump and lose any hope of making the final.

The moguls team now heads to Steamboat, Colorado, USA, for the US Selection Events, with the team rejoining the World Cup circuit in January.

The opening FIS World Cup Mogul Skiing event takes place this weekend in Ruka, Finland.

The event will be contested by emerging AIS Mogul Skiing athletes Britt Cox and Matt Graham, who will be competing in their first ever World Cup events outside of North America.

Both Cox and Graham will have benefitted from plenty of runs on the Ruka course, having been based at the resort since mid-November for their first on snow training camp of the northern hemisphere winter.

AIS Mogul Skiing Head Coach Steve Desovich has been pleased with both of his young athlete’s work ethic in Ruka, which is renowned for its tough training environment being in the Arctic Circle, with cold temperatures and only a few hours of sunlight per day at this time of year.

“Both Britt and Matt have applied themselves exceptionally well in Ruka, which can be very tough on young athletes.”

“The course has been difficult with icy conditions making training challenging.”

“The first event will be tough for both athletes, but we hope the early season training will give them a great platform for the North American World Cups in January and February.”

The event will take place late on Saturday night on the 10th of December Australian time.