Tough call for Cooper as protege Peel jumps for Olympic gold

Her last competition before Beijing was a thumping victory in the final World Cup event, where she became just the third woman to land a quadruple twisting triple backflip in competition. Her bag of tricks is so difficult and technically proficient that Cooper said she doesn’t need to get out of her comfort zone to be right in the medal hunt.

“I hope she sticks to her plan, backs herself and waits for the opposition to falter,” she said. “In her recent competition, she scored 118 and that level of jumping hasn’t been done since I was setting world records. We now have the highest-scoring jumps of all time.

“Chances are you won’t need 118 points to win. Keep it simple, just do the do. I keep messaging her and saying she doesn’t need to do any more, or any less, just keep doing what has been working. Just get into the final and then each round is keeping the dream alive.

“Don’t watch what the other girls and try to pull a rabbit out of the hat. The rabbit she already has is more than good enough. Laura doesn’t need to be worrying about what anybody else’s game.”

Peel has plenty of aces up her sleeve apart from her signature moves. Cooper said her excellent landing percentage would mean she won’t be stressing about missing jumps and can instead focus on executing to the best of her ample ability.

“Consistency will let her sleep at night over there,” Cooper says. “A lot of athletes worry about whether they are going to hit or miss the next day. Laura knows that she not only has the highest degree of difficulty in the world, she has one of the highest landing percentages.

“She can keep reminding herself of positives. She has done it over and over and over again. The repetition and consistency is there. Some of the others, they will have to stand at the top of the run and think, ‘I’ve got to land this’.

“That won’t come into Laura’s thinking because she does it so consistently. It’s huge in a sport where some of the athletes only land 20 per cent of their jumps. The other 80 per cent, they crash. Laura flips that on its head; she lands 80 per cent of her jumps. It’s unbelievable.”

If Peel triumphs, she will join luminaries Alisa Camplin (2002) and Lydia Lassila (2010) as Olympic champions. It would give Australia a magnificent strike rate in the event given the limited opportunities for Winter athletes, most of whom spent a huge percentage of their time competing overseas.

The qualifying rounds for the women’s aerials begin on Sunday night in Beijing, and the final is the following night.

Cooper rates American Ashley Caldwell, a former world champion who has already won gold in the mixed team event, and China’s hometown star Xu Mengtao as Peel’s biggest threat.

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