Low point behind TV commentator's tears after Australia's Cooper Woods delivered stunning moguls gold

LIVIGNO: To understand the flood of tears shed not just by Australia's newest gold medallist Cooper Woods after his staggering feat set in but by team staff and TV commentators too, you only need to go back 24 hours to the sense of emptiness felt when Jakara Anthony botched her super final run and left a gold medal on the table.

Having called it quits at 27 after her moguls competition at Beijing 2022, Britt Cox is experiencing the Olympic Games for the first time as a retired athlete who is still extremely close to the team.

She is one of Anthony's closest friends and a big sister figure to the likes of Woods, who has always had enormous talent but has struggled to back it up with results on the biggest stage.

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This correspondent shared a van with Cox back to the Livigno TV studio from the moguls venue after Anthony's shock result in the women's super final. To describe it as a sombre five minutes would undersell the depth of the emotion Cox and others were feeling. She held it together during her call but had cried after climbing out of her commentary position and greeting Anthony for a hug.

It wasn't just Anthony's performance that had left the Australians in Livigno feeling flat.

Speak to the experts and they'll tell you proudly that our moguls program is world leading. It punches well above its weight. Athletes like Jackson Harvey who have a choice to make between representing Australia or another nation they are eligible for routinely choose to wear the green and gold, so highly rated is the team and the staff who hone the athletes over four-year cycles with gold medals on their mind.

Yet, day one of the moguls competition was an ordinary day for the Australian men. Pyeongchang silver medallist Matt Graham qualified 10th, assuring his place in the first final but Woods was shattered to place 15th and Harvey was way off the pace in 23rd. George Murphy was 26th from 29 starters.

To be fair, there was a strong sense that Woods had copped a raw deal from the judges.

Speaking to the media after his first qualifying run, Woods did his best not to lash out but his reaction when he got his score just beforehand said more than words. In the crowd, his family, which has a strong skiing pedigree, was equally angry.

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While Woods and the other male competitors had a rest day to lick their wounds, Anthony appeared almost a certainty to win her second Olympic gold medal, with two imperious runs, only to stumble when it mattered most.

All of a sudden the prospect of a gold medal in the women's moguls and the outside chance of another in the men's felt like it had evaporated completely.

No one was expecting Woods to be the athlete to step up to the plate and deliver the first medal of the Games for an Australian team that has been widely rated the best ever.

And so, when the score dropped and a 1 was thrust next to Woods' name about 30 seconds after his super final run, Cox, sitting alongside Todd Woodbridge in Nine's commentary box, was almost completely lost for words.

Eventually Woodbridge prompted her to speak.

"I'm tearing up here in the commentary box, this is unbelievable," Cox said, choking up. "It's just ... I'm so happy for that kid."

In an interview with Nine's Ally Langdon soon afterwards, Cox explained her emotions further, revealing that she'd been frustrated by the huge talent of Woods, and up until that point the failure to get it done when it mattered.

"This team, what they've put me through in the last 24 hours. I'm so mad with them but I'm so happy. Cooper, just wow!" she said.

"The amount of times bloody Coop, he's crumbled under that pressure and just gone too far over his ability and cooked it in that final run in the super final when he didn't need to."

This time, everything just clicked.

"Today it was just, it was his moment, and I could see how focused he was, his eyes were just locked in on his line and he was so composed, he handled the pressure so well, and it was such a well-deserved victory," Cox said.

"The first medal of the Games and it's gold and it was just such a magical moment - the build-up, he qualified for that super final in the top position. The pressure was there, could he do it? We didn't know. (Japanese bronze medallist) Ikuma [Horishima] did the Cork 14, I thought he put the pressure on the rest of the guys coming down.

"He did it, the clouds parted, it was almost like a movie scene. He just laid down that run, I said it in the studio the other day, he has a heart of gold so I think that's maybe why I'm so emotional, just to see him get that, it's just incredible."

Back in the Livigno studio, Vancouver 2010 gold medallist Lydia Lassila was almost equally overcome by emotion when the result registered.

"Cooper Woods, welcome to the club! And I couldn't be more happier, that was just a phenomenal performance. I'm glad you guys didn't see me in the studio here, because I was going bonkers," she said.

Lassila explained that her sense of pride stemmed in part from the fact that Woods had never before been in the position to go last in a major super final having qualified in first place.

It's a position that carries its own pressure and Lassila was floored by how he handled it.

"It's enormous! He's never really been in that position before, where he's come down as the last skier and the pressure was on," she said.

"He just stayed the line, he stayed the course, he stayed cool, and he's an Olympic champion and these things are not easy to win."