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Australia won its first medal of the Winter Olympics in some style with Cooper Woods taking gold in the men’s moguls with a superb run at Livigno.
The gold was presented by one of the country’s most decorated Olympians to one of the most unlikely, with Jessica Fox awarding mogul winner Woods with his prize.
Having never won a World Cup, only making the podium once in 51 starts and coming into the Olympics on the back of an underwhelming season, the 25-year-old was considered a long-shot to be amongst the medals.
But Woods delivered on the big stage to take the gold ahead of mogul skiing greats Mikael Kingsbury and Akuma Horishima.
Canoe superstar and six-time Olympic medallist Fox presented his medal, with Woods a little star-struck.
“It was an amazing honour to receive my gold medal from a fellow champion,” Woods said.
“She’s an Aussie icon – so lovely, but it threw me off guard, she was very emotional handing me the medal and it brought a lot of significance to that moment.
“She started tearing up a little bit, and I was just, ‘Oh my god, is this Jess Fox!’, that was so cool.
“It was really nice to receive something so elite from an Aussie icon.”
Australian chef de mission, Alyssa Camplin, who won gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics, made up a trio of Aussie champs.
On duty before the Games as a member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, Fox has been spending time with the Australian team in Livigno.
She was watching on when an uncharacteristic error midway through Jakara Anthony’s medal round race saw her hopes of winning successive gold medals slip away.
The pair caught up after the Paris Olympics where the canoe great won her third gold, while Anthony was sidelined with a broken collarbone.
As well as being Olympic champions, they have now both carried the Australian flag in the opening ceremony, with Fox offering her advice on how to deal with the extra attention from that and the pressure of defending a title.
A non-skier, Fox said she’d been in awe of the daredevil athletes in their high-stakes winter sports.
“Unfortunately, as a summer athlete I’ve been chasing summer since I was a kid,” Fox told AAP.
“I skied once as, like an eight-year-old, and then once again in 2018 or 2019, but I thought it was really irresponsible in case I did my ACL just before the Olympics.
“I look at them and I think winter athletes are just built different - they are incredible, fearless.
“I’m going to say robust because some of the falls I’ve seen and they just get back up and ski or snowboard off. It’s insane what they do, and I have so much respect and admiration for them.”
