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By Simon Smale
Topic:Winter Sports
Jakara Anthony achieved World Cup greatness in 2023/24. (Getty Images: Sarah Stier)
Jakara Anthony gets her 2024/25 FIS World Cup moguls season underway in Ruka, Finland, this weekend.
Anthony won 14 out of 16 events in the 2023/24 season, a new record.
The qualification period for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milano-Cortina gets underway this season.
There has never been a season like it.
In the 2023/24 campaign, Australian Jakara Anthony took moguls skiing to new levels.
The 26-year-old established a level of excellence that few are ever capable of achieving, winning 14 FIS (International Ski Federation) World Cup titles out of a possible 16.
Rarely has such a degree of dominance been established at the highest level of any sport, let alone freestyle skiing, where the vagaries of judges can derail even the greatest of efforts, while slope conditions can range from pristine to extreme in the space of minutes.
"It's pretty hard to comprehend. It was insane," Anthony tells ABC Sport from Barwon Heads during one of her increasingly rare stints at home last month.
"Taking 14 out of 16 wins, being on the podium in 15 events … it's still kind-of hard to comprehend just how big that achievement is."
Jakara Anthony won all three crystal globes on offer for the 2023/24 season, for overall, dual and single moguls. (Supplied: OWIA/Chris Hocking)
The stats back that statement up.
No moguls skier had ever won that many World Cup events in a single season, not even American great Hannah Kearney, who has a record 46 World Cup victories to her name.
Only one skier full stop has managed that many wins in a single FIS World Cup season, Swiss Alpine skier Vreni Schneider all the way back in 1989.
Schneider, incidentally, won 13 out of 14 slalom and giant slalom races, plus one of two combined events, but she did not win any of the four Super G events or eight downhills on the calendar that season.
Anthony though, the 2022 Olympic champion, was nigh on unstoppable, in an admittedly more specialised event.
There are few skiers flying higher than Jakara Anthony at the moment. (OWIA: Chris Hocking)
But excellence comes with its own pressure. Pursuit of perfection is rarely perfect.
That became clear at Deer Valley, when Anthony uncharacteristically crashed out of contention in the individual moguls.
The Utah event is one of the moguls circuit's most prestigious — the slope is known as The Champions Run and typically attracts a massive crowd.
After such a monumental winning streak — Anthony had won eight World Cups in a row at that stage across moguls and dual moguls, standing on the podium in 11-straight events to start the season — the question on how Anthony would respond to the rare shock of defeat would understandably loom large.
Her supporters needn't have worried.
The following day Anthony crushed the opposition in the dual moguls event — a head-to-head version of the sport that will make its Olympic bow in 2026 at Milano-Cortina.
Deer Valley's Champion Run is one of the most popular on the entire tour. (Supplied: OWIA/Chris Hocking)
Up against home favourite Jaelin Kauf and the woman she beat to Olympic gold in China, Anthony pulled out her best performance of the year to get back up to the top step.
"I think that's one of the best runs I've done," she says.
"There were a few mistakes on my behalf on the Friday, so definitely learned a lot from that and was able to kind of look at it as more of a learning experience.
"That failure, as some people may have seen it as, I was much happier to learn those things in a situation like that than in some others.
"You gotta take the positives out of it."
Jaelin Kauf (left) has been powerless to resist Jakara Anthony this season, as has everyone else. (Getty Images: Sarah Stier)
Anthony proceeded to win the final three events on the circuit, concluding her record-breaking campaign on a monumental high.
It puts Anthony, who was named Snow Sport athlete of the year and winner of the Ian Thorpe outstanding achievement award at the NSWIS awards in November, in rarefied air.
Of the 29 Australians that have won World Cup events, only five-time Olympian Jackie Cooper (25) has earned more victories than Anthony's 22.
Currently, Anthony sits third all time among Australian able-bodied snow sports athletes in the number of podiums achieved in World Cup events with 41 — level with trailblazing aerialist Kirstie Marshall — and just outside the top 10 for all-time women's moguls podiums.
Jakara Anthony's ability in the air is unmatched among her peers. (Supplied: OWIA/Chris Hocking)
With this season getting underway in the Finnish resort of Ruka this weekend, Anthony will hope to extend her winning streak again.
"It's pretty awesome when you draw like that to be getting compared to those athletes who achieved some great things. Pretty special," Anthony says.
Not that records are the sole driver of Anthony's ambition in the sport. They are simply an uncontrollable by-product of her brilliance.
"Those numbers are all based off results and, unfortunately, the actual result is an uncontrollable," Anthony says.
"I could go out there and get my first run spot on, and that's in my control to put in the effort and intend to get gold, but someone might just do it better than me on the day.
Jakara Anthony won an incredible 14 events last season. (Supplied: FIS Freestyle)
"[If I complete my best run] it doesn't necessarily mean I'm guaranteed to win. I hope that's the case, but the reality is, it's a little bit uncontrollable where you actually end up in the field.
"So yeah, I would probably consider results a bit of an uncontrollable.
"But they're still very, very cool accolades and I'm very proud of them."
This rational approach to results is not new for Anthony.
Australia's newest Olympic medallist Jakara Anthony beams with pride at the accolade, but it isn't the glory that drives her — it's the search for "the flow".
Soon after winning her first Olympic gold medal on the freezing slopes of Zhangjiakou, Anthony told reporters that the perfect moguls run does not exist.
"I think there will always be things that I wanna change," she said in that Zhangjiakou Mountain Media Centre press conference, gold medal hanging from her neck.
"I will continue to keep working on those."
Perfection may not exist. But to master the moguls discipline? It seems as though Anthony is already well on the way to achieving that.
"I'm definitely driven by trying to achieve mastery in the sport," Anthony says.
"That's definitely my main motivating factor in all aspects … But the reality is we're doing a competitive sport and you're going out there and you do want to win.
No matter how many times a skier visits a venue, the mogul fields are never quite the same. (Supplied: FIS Freestyle)
"The times in my career where I've become more focused on achieving those results is when my performance has definitely dropped.
"When I've been focusing more on that process and just trying to give my all to achieving each goal that I've got set with technique, that's definitely when I've been able to produce my best performances and be more consistent and enjoy what I'm doing a lot more."
Anthony lets out a short laugh down the phone as she refers to herself as a veteran.
The idea is not as far-fetched as it might seem — despite being just 26 years old, she has been on the World Cup tour since she was just 16 and has already appeared at two Olympic Games.
That longevity places an extraordinary demand emotionally as well as physically.
Jakara Anthony has been sussing out the slopes of Ruka ahead of the FIS World Cup opener on November 30. (OWIA: Chris Hocking)
Anthony says getting back to Australia to spend time with her parents and younger brother, with whom she is very close, is "pretty special", even if those moments get "further and further apart".
But such are the sacrifices that have to be made in order to ascend to the top.
Anthony said her parents, recently retired, would try to see her compete in Europe this year, for such a pivotal season.
After all, Olympic qualification points are up for grabs throughout the season ahead of the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games, which is just 15 short months away.
"We work in four year cycles, being an Olympic sport," Anthony says.
So much is still ahead of Jakara Anthony. (OWIA: Chris Hocking)
"So while we're always working towards getting the best results that we can at those events in between Olympics, like the World Cup, the World Championships and just trying to reach our goals in the sport that aren't comp related, these big plans are always for you to get to the next Olympics.
"It's going to be on us before we know it — we're already well over halfway through the next cycle.
"It's pretty wild to think of it like that, but yeah, we'll be heading to Livigno for the Olympic testing [this season].
"So definitely looking forward to that, it'll start to feel a bit more real."
The World Cup finals will be held on the Olympic course in Livigno in mid-March, although competing on that slope does not necessarily mean the athletes will know what to expect come Games time.
"Every year when you go to the same location, the course could be built up completely different," Anthony says.
Jakara Anthony says the Olympics will loom large over this season. (OWIA: CHris Hocking)
"That's definitely is one of the appealing things about the sport — it's part of what kind of drew me into the moguls scene when I was younger, that it wasn't just running over the same ground every time, there's always something different to work on.
"As you progress, you're seeing more and more different runs, different courses every year and you're just dealing with so much change all the time, which can be really challenging.
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"[It can be] frustrating, and I've definitely found that over the years, but being able to develop the skills where you're able to successfully move from course to course, it's a pretty cool feeling when you're able to achieve those goals on different slopes."
Anthony's goal will now be to become the first woman to defend an Olympic moguls title and just the second athlete to do so after Canadian Alexandre Bilodeau (2010, 2014), who along with American David Wise (halfpipe) are the only freestyle skiers to ever win back-to-back golds at a Games.
Dale Begg-Smith (moguls), Lydia Lassila and Alisa Camplin (both aerials) are the only freestyle skiers from Australia to win Olympic medals at consecutive Games.
There's still a season-and-a-half to go before Anthony can shoot for Olympic gold again and, needless to say, a lot can happen between now and then.
But with such a grounded approach, you'd be brave to bet against her.
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