No double for Perrine Laffont. Reigning Olympic champion, the Frenchwoman had to settle for 4th place, this Sunday, February 6, in the Beijing Olympics mogul ski final. The gold medal was won by Australian Jakara Anthony.
She was one of the great medal chances of the tricolor clan. One of the biggest gold medal chances. But the 23-year-old Ariègeoise did not manage to repeat her feat in Pyeongchang four years ago to become the first double Olympic champion in the history of mogul skiing, or even to get on the podium. Second in qualifying on Thursday, she had nevertheless entered this final perfectly by ranking 3and place of the first run with a run full of control.
But she had a slightly more complicated second run, finishing in 5th place. Just to enter the super final bringing together the six best. If she was more applied and obtained the score of 77.36, she was overtaken by the Australian Jakara Anthony who largely won (83.09 pts), ahead of the American Jaelin Kauf (80.28 pts), while the Russian Anastasiia Smirnova narrowly deprived Perrine Laffont of the bronze medal (77.72 pts).
A great disappointment for Perrine Laffont, who has dominated her discipline since her Olympic title four years ago. “It was my dream. I had trouble relaxing and skiing like in training… What more can I say? I’ll go eat chocolate and then that’s it. I dreamed of getting on that podium, it was another little girl’s dream. I think we’ll have to digest all that. We’ve been preparing for 9 months. I’m going to need to cut a little though. It’s a lot of work for no medal at the end, ”she said.