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Thanks to the courage to take risks and a perfect last try, snowboarder Anna Gasser jumped to her second Olympic gold. With a Cab Double Cork 1260, which she showed in a competition for the first time, she caught the favored New Zealander Zoi Sadowski Synnott and was crowned Olympic champion in Big Air in Beijing and in Pyeongchang in 2018. Gasser came out on top with 185.50 points Sadowski Synnott (177.00) and Japan’s Kokomo Murase (171.50) through.
Video: Anna Gasser flies to gold in Big Air:
“It’s so unexpected for me. It never worked out 100 percent this year, and today, after all the months I’ve had a bit of bad luck, everything came together. That makes it all the more beautiful. This time I didn’t really think about the result . I just wanted to do my tricks and show my best. I would have been happy with bronze today,” explained Gasser, who now belongs to an exclusive group. The 30-year-old is Austria’s first double Olympic champion who does not come from the alpine area. Only Trude Jochum-Beiser, Petra Kronberger and Michaela Dorfmeister had managed to do that before.
The Carinthian was on course for a medal from the first jump. Gasser scored 90 points with a frontside double cork 1080 and took second place behind Sadowski Synnott. With a backside double cork 1080 (86.75 points) she claimed second place and reduced the gap to 0.25 points. In her final jump, before which she was already certain of silver, Gasser grabbed the Cab Double Cork 1260 for the first time in a competition. She managed the jump with three and a half turns, two of them overhead, perfectly. Thanks to 95.50 points, ultimately the highest score in the competition, she put Sadowski Synnott under pressure. In contrast to slopestyle, when the New Zealander had secured gold with her last attempt, Sadowski Synnott could not follow up this time. “Seeing Anna jump the Cab 12 and defend her medal was a great moment and we’re all happy for each other,” said the silver medalist.
“Never done this trick in competition”
The fact that a place on the podium was guaranteed before the final jump gave Gasser even more inspiration. “Of course I had a little hope that I would have a medal. I knew I wouldn’t go home empty-handed, I had two great tricks. And I’ve never done this one trick in competition, but I trained it so hard, I really wanted to show it in competition. I thought to myself: I deserved to land that. I came here because of this trick. I didn’t do it in any training, but I knew inside: I couldn’t have prepared better be”, Gasser was happy about her successful debut jump.
She had actually planned it earlier in the competition. “I actually wanted to start with the Cab Double 1260, but there was minimal uphill wind. I changed my program because I thought to myself: I don’t have the speed to approach it the wrong way. I’ve got something extra tight dressed today. It was real freestyle snowboarding today because everything was decided very spontaneously,” said the Carinthian.
Phone call with injured partner
Too little speed was also a concern beforehand, and her partner was injured. “Actually, preparing for the competition was extremely difficult,” she said, referring to Clemens Millauer, who broke his ankle during training. “I wasn’t in a good mood after the training sessions. I struggled with the fact that I had trained the trick and it failed because I was too slow in the run-up. When he hurt himself, I didn’t even think about the competition anymore “, my perspective has changed quite a bit. You then think that there are more important things than the medal. Clemens is such an important person for me, a support. At first I didn’t know how I was going to do it. In Korea he was the person who helped me and calmed me down. But I called him before the last jump. Somehow he rode with me today,” said Gasser.
Ultimately, however, it worked out as desired and Gasser provided the ÖOC team with a total of 16 medals (6 gold, 6 silver, 4 bronze) in Beijing and the fourth for the ÖSV snowboarders after gold for Benjamin Karl and Alessandro Hämmerle and silver Daniela Ulbing.
Source: Nachrichten
