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Simon Smale in Zhangjiakou

Jakara Anthony’s Winter Olympic gold medal was close to moguls perfection

Jakara Anthony created history by winning Australia's first gold medal in the women's moguls at the Beijing Winter Olympics. (AP: Gregory Bull)

You are Australia's sixth Winter Olympics gold medallist.

The mention of that accolade brought another smile to the already beaming face of Jakara Anthony moments after she created history at Zhangjiakou Genting Snow Park on Sunday night.

And she may well be pleased, because the manner of victory, in moguls terms, was a rout.

The 23-year-old led a stacked field – arguably the highest quality across the board in moguls history — from start to finish, nailing the best qualifying mark on Thursday before sending down the best score in each successive finals run to etch her name into Australian sporting folklore.

"I know that I'm capable of skiing like that," she said.

In what is a judged sport, therefore hostage to the vagaries of the judge's opinion, the way she stamped her authority on the field was extraordinary.

It was particularly evident through the air.

Jakara Anthony is Australia's first Winter Olympic gold medallist since 2010. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)

Anthony's top cork 720 mute — a jump new for this season – was far superior to anything anyone else was attempting and, when combined with an immaculately formed backflip mute and clean, flowing turns through the mogul fields, was too much for anyone else to handle.

Anthony has been mixing it with the top athletes in the world all season, recording six podiums and one victory to sit third overall on the World Cup rankings.

Tonight, though, she was on another level.

Her relentless excellence was too much for reigning world and Olympic champion Perrine Laffont and current world cup leader Anri Kawamura, women many observers pegged as Anthony's biggest challengers but who faltered when it counted to finish outside the medals.

This result, if not its dominant manner, is no flash in the pan.

Anthony's rise to Olympic glory has come at the end of four years of sustained excellence on the World Cup circuit, all of which was sparked by a surprise fourth-place finish at the PyeongChang Games.

Fourth is arguably the worst place to finish in an Olympic competition, agonisingly close to the immortality that comes with a medal.

But it was not a disappointment that fuelled Anthony to become an Olympic champion.

Skiing moguls means more to Anthony than that.

Finding the flow and going with it

In January at the Deer Valley World Cup after Anthony delivered another supreme run in Final 1, scoring 84.37, the highest score of the weekend.

She ended up finishing 3rd – just behind Laffont and Kawamura — another impressive World Cup podium performance, but later wrote that winning medals was not her sole motivation.

"Medals are great but they aren't what drive me," she wrote.

"In that 30 seconds [of that run], I couldn't hear the crowd. I felt no pressure, I wasn't thinking about the competition. I was just in the moment loving mogul skiing just like I did as a kid.

In the mix zone after her historic finish in China, Anthony said she felt the same thing during her gold medal performance.

"I would compare that run that I just did to the same feeling as that final one at Deer Valley," she said.

"I felt like I was in flow. When I crossed the finish line I was already like, whatever happens now I'm totally content with.

While I'm sure Anthony would not forgo her Olympic gold to achieve that feeling, she acknowledged that being Olympic champion was something she had dreamed of for a "very, very long time," afterall, but it does hint at something much deeper, a mindfulness that skiing can help her achieve.

Anthony says forgetting the pressure of competing and being lost in the moment, also known as 'the flow', is what drives her. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)

She even said that had someone beaten her score then she would have been completely at peace with herself.

"I thought that I had done a run to the best of my ability," she said.

"I thought I'd done enough and if anyone had beaten that run I would have been so stoked for them because it would have been a phenomenal run."

Not that she would have known if someone had surpassed a total she was capable of. Anthony said she had "no idea what went on tonight" when she wasn't skiing.

"Up until the point that I ski I am entirely focused on what it is that I need to do to that run so, honestly, I can't tell you what any other girl did out there today.

"I was just so focused on what I needed to do so that none of it can play on my mind."

Anthony won Australia's sixth gold medal in Winter Olympics history. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer)

That focus is something Anthony has been working on all year, as much as the thousands of practice jumps into the water in Brisbane and the countless hours on the snow and in the gym.

That's one of the reasons why she spent today day doing puzzles – supplied by 2002 aerials Olympic champion Alisa Camplin — spending as much time getting her mind ready as her body and not winding herself into a frenzy of nerves.

It's also why she does not use her fourth-place finish in PyeongChang as a stick to beat herself with.

"That was my personal best result at the time and I think that I really skied to my potential that night on the course.

"I was so happy with it and I'm still so happy with it — I have no disappointment whatsoever that I came fourth there, I couldn't have asked any more of myself at the time."

So, perhaps Anthony is chasing something deeper. Perfection, perhaps?

"I don't think there ever will be a perfect mogul run," she said.

"I think there will always be things that I wanna change I will continue to keep working on those, but I don't think the perfect moguls run exists so, it wasn't perfect.

"It was pretty good."

She might not think so, but it felt pretty perfect from the finish line.

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