Peel places fifth in Lake Placid Aerial World Cup
Jan 22, 2012
Australian aerial skier Laura Peel produced another strong performance to finish 5th in the 3rd round of the World Cup at Lake Placid in the United States, building on her 3rd place last week.
The ACT skier finished just 0.84 points behind the current World Cup equal leader, Ukrainian Olga Volkova, and 1.02 points behind the reigning World Champion, Shuang Cheng from China in the round before the super-final.
Having qualified in 9th place, Peel improved in the next round to finish in 5th place overall and joined teammate Danielle Scott in the overall top 10 placings, which provided a successful day for the Australian team.
Peel's double twisting double somersault scored the Australian Institute of Sport / Victorian Institute of Sport scholarship holder an outstanding 88.51 points, but she could not quite match the top four.
For the second event in a row, all podium positions were occupied by Chinese athletes, with first place going to Mengtao XU, who was comfortably ahead of Shuang and Fanyu Kong in third. Today's three place-getters finished in exactly the same order as yesterday's second round competition.
Peel said she was pleased that she was able to deliver another top score today, which she rates as being on a par with the jump that took her to third place in the World Cup opening event in Mont Gabriel, Canada, on January 15.
"I would say Mount Gabriel and today are the best I have ever jumped," Peel said. "Everybody can always improve a little but the way I jumped today was everything I had but maybe I can eventually do jumps with more difficulty. "I am really confident with the jumps I have now and it's nice to know that I am not too far behind the Chinese."
After today's solid performances, Peel and Scott are placed in the World Cup's top 10 standings, in 6th and 10th respectively.
After the physical demands of two competitions in as many days, the team has two days of recovery before traveling to Calgary, Canada, to compete in the fourth round on January 29.
Courtesy of OWIA