Aussie winter athletes win two events
Dec 17, 2017 - 3:47 AM Australia's Winter Olympics stocks continue to rise less than two months out from the Games in Pyeongchang with two World Cup gold medals won over the weekend.Aerial skier Danielle Scott bounced back to form by winning in China, following on from a disappointing 22nd place on the opening day of World Cup competition.
In a one-jump final, Scott clearly led the field with 100.11 points ahead of China's Mengtao Xu (87.42) and Russia's Kristina Spiridonova (86.94). Fellow Australian Samantha Wells was fifth (86.36) while four-time Winter Olympian Lydia Lassila skipped the Secret Garden events.
World championship silver medallist Scott now sits third on the standings.
In Austria, Jarryd Hughes showed he has fully recovered from knee surgery last year by taking out the snowboard cross event.
Austrians Alessandro Haemmerle and Markus Schairer were second and third respectively.
Hughes' victory in Montafon on Sunday (AEDT) highlighted the enormous depth in the Australian team given last week's second placing to Adam Lambert and two season-starting victories to Alex Pullin in the discipline.
It marked just the second World Cup win in the career of Hughes, who is also the defending X Games champion.
Australians now sit first (Pullin), fourth (Hughes) and fifth (Lambert) on the standings.
The only sour note for the squad is confirmation that Belle Brockhoff has ruptured her ACL for a second time, the World Cup winner now looking at long odds to be ready for Pyeongchang.
Meanwhile snowboarder Scotty James won silver in the halfpipe in the Dew Tour event in Breckenridge, Colorado.
James had struggled to lay down a clean run in the final of the World Cup event in nearby Copper Mountain last weekend but returned to form on Saturday.
The world champion led after the first two runs with a top score of 96 points but was edged by Jake Pates (97.33) in the final run down the 'pipe. Another American, Ben Ferguson (92) was third.
Source: AAP
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