Grey's Anatomy the secret weapon as Jakara Anthony lives up to moguls gold medal favouritism with sizzling first run

LIVIGNO: Defending Olympic moguls gold medallist Jakara Anthony is in perfect position to go back-to-back after topping the scoreboard with a clinical qualifying run on Wednesday (AEDT) but her fellow flag bearer Matt Graham has work to do.

Graham, the silver medallist at Pyeongchang 2018, scraped into the first final in 10th, the last automatic qualifying position, and will need a significant improvement to progress to the medal race on Thursday night.

Anthony and Graham were the only Australians to clinch automatic qualification, with men Cooper Woods (15th), Jackson Harvey (23rd) and George Murphy (26th), and women Emma Bosco (17th) and Charlotte Wilson (28th) outside the top 10, which puts them into the second qualification round.

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The women will complete their competition on Wednesday, with the skiers outside the top 10 going into a second qualification round to compete for the final 10 spots in the first final.

The first final, which features the top 20 skiers in the field, determines the top eight skiers, who compete in the medal final. The men will complete their competition the following day.

Anthony, who is the red hot gold medal favourite after a dominant return from injury, delivered a near flawless run, which the judges scored an 81.65. Two Americans are breathing down her neck after scoring an 80.95 and an 80.74.

"It felt like what I needed to put down for qualifications, it felt pretty tidy," Anthony told reporters, including Wide World of Sports, after her run.

"My goal was just I wanted to go through in qualification one today, so I have the chance to come out for finals tomorrow. I don't need to worry about qualification two."

Anthony performed a Cork 7 Mute on the top jump and a Back X on the second jump, executing both superbly.

The 27-year-old superstar was sidelined for much of last year due to a collarbone injury but recovered in time to blitz the World Cup events late in the year.

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Reflecting on her preparation, Anthony conceded her lead-up to Milano Cortina had been very different to Beijing 2022 but said she felt confident she was in a strong position to defend her crown.

"Definitely a bit different coming in as defending champion, but also a really cool opportunity," she said.

"Only one person gets that chance every four years and pretty cool that it's me this time around. My approach to the competition doesn't change because of that, I'm still out there just trying to hit the cues in the run that I know I need to and put down the run that I'm capable of. Me and my team have done everything to put me in the position to do that and now it's just time to go and execute and it's going to be what it's going to be."

The Australian competitors said the Livigno course was excellent to compete on but an overcast day, featuring some light snow and fog, made qualifying challenging.

Wilson, 20, who won her first World Cup event in March last year on the same Livigno course, was brought undone by a combination of nerves and the tricky conditions, with the Jindabyne local falling when she attempted to put the brakes on after overshooting her landing off the first jump.

"I think I just got a bit antsy," she said after her run. "I mean, there's a lot of nerves and I went a bit big on the top air, which I usually do when I'm nervous, and I just threw on the brakes when I really could have just skied through it like I have been in training. But it's nice to just get a run out of the way and kind of tick that box and now I can just focus on doing the run that I did in training and that I know I can put down."

Wilson admitted that she would be nervous again at the top of the course before her second qualification run but felt confident she could ski closer to her best after "getting the monkey off my back" with her first run at her debut Olympic Games.

Graham, who competed at an Olympics in front of his 17-month-old daughter Ada for the first time, admitted he was lucky to scrape through based on his qualifying run, claiming his teammate in 15th Woods "was underscored" and "probably should have been in front of me".

He gave an adorable interview to Nine's Danika Mason, cradling his little girl, after the last competitor's run sealed his fate.

"I almost teared up when I saw her for the first time (in Livigno)," he said. "It's special to have her here."

While the men get a rest day between Tuesday's first qualifying session and the final three stages of the competition, the women have just one sleep to ponder their next run.

Even that is a departure from convention, with all their events apart from Olympic Games taking place on one day, with each stage of competition run back-to-back, concluding with the medal race.

Anthony conceded that she "doesn't really have a routine" for the break between stages, but said she would try to switch off by building Lego and watching Grey's Anatomy.

"I'm at the end of season eight right now," she said. "McDreamy's still alive [spoiler], I've watched it through, don't worry, this is my third time around."