As the country continues to celebrate its sixth ever Winter Olympics gold medal skiing champion, it’s little wonder that Jakara Anthony is the name on every Australian’s lips.
Here are five things you need to know about the young skiing superstar.
She’s from Cairns, now a Victorian resident
Born in Cairns in 1998, Anthony and her family moved to the small coastal town of Barwon Heads in Victoria when she was still a child. She went to school at Christian College Geelong where she graduated in 2016.
Ski Moguling since she was a kid
Anthony began skiing at four years-old, and at 11, joined the Team Buller Riders’ moguls program at Mount Buller. For the next several years, she spent her winters training and competing.
“I really enjoyed it when I competed in moguls in interschools so I decided I wanted to spend all my time on snow training for it,” she said in an interview last month.
By 2017, she had qualified for the Mogul World Cup circuit before competing in the women’s final at Deer Valley in Utah.
Later that month, she competed at the Tazawako World Cup in Japan and placed 9th, while achieving a new Personal Best score of 74.17.
In March that year, she made her World Championships debut at Sierra Nevada, pacing 12th in the women’s event.
She made her Olympic debut at just 19
Anthony made her Olympic debut in 2018 at PyeongChang Winter Olympics finishing fourth overall and securing the country’s best ever result (at the time) for a female mogul skier.
She completed one of her best runs of the competition with a score of 76.81.
Childhood ambition fulfilled
Last month, Anthony told the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia that her childhood ambition was to represent her country at the Olympics and win a medal.
Well, looks like she has done just that!
She’s pursuing biomedical science
After graduating from high school, Anthony enrolled in a Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Deakin University which she will continue to undertake once she returns to Australia.