Australian Danielle Scott wins silver in women’s aerials
I’m sorry, Clark, but the wedding has come second.
Of the six medals Australia has won at Milan Cortina 2026 so far, none have come in as long a time as this silver, which Scott held up with her signature sequined gloves after the women’s aerial final as if she couldn’t believe it was finally real.
Wednesday marked the 24th anniversary of Alisa Camplin’s historic gold medal – the first medal won by an Australian woman – at Salt Lake City 2002. Scott was 11 at the time, a few years after becoming the youngest athlete ever to receive an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship.
Scott’s mother bought him Camplin’s book. High Flyingand this inspired her to eventually follow in his footsteps.
“I found out she was a gymnast. I was a gymnast and I was looking for the next challenge,” she said.
“Before I knew it, five-time Olympic champion Jackie Cooper had me hooked on the sport and I never looked back. I later went on to train with Lydia [Lassila]and this sport has such a rich history… I wanted it as much as those girls.”
Camplin, now Australia’s chief of mission, was equally emotional.
They shared a moment together in the morning: “I reminded him that everything he needed was already inside him and that we loved him no matter what,” Camplin said.
“There are a few extra words. I’m going to keep them personal because they were valuable. These were all here for him, and he went out and did it.”
The reason Scott was so gut-wrenched before the Olympics was because he’d been there three times before and been blown to bits: ninth, 12th and 10th.
Due to the severe weather affecting Livigno this week, the entire competition was compressed into one day instead of two as planned. This seemed to suit Scott very well. He sealed his place in the Olympic final for the first time with the second-best score in the heats and then executed the best jump of his career – a simply perfect back three full, the hardest trick to achieve to achieve a personal best of 117.19 – to progress to the ‘super final’ with supreme confidence.
The flip side of such a high score is the knowledge that he will be the last of the six athletes.
“It’s a lot of pressure, and I thought I was prepared for these moments in the last two Olympics, but I walked away heartbroken and told myself I wasn’t ready to leave heartbroken again,” she said.
“So I just put one foot in front of the other. I kept telling myself: Don’t get in the way of anything and just keep one foot in front of the other and just believe in my team.”
Scott’s throw wasn’t as perfect as his first jump, but it wasn’t far off. His reaction immediately after his hands cleared the snow upon landing was one of excitement that he had done enough to get onto the podium; It’s not just the disappointment of knowing he hasn’t done enough to unseat China’s Mengtao Xu and win gold.
“I was disappointed that I couldn’t keep my hands off taking those coins. Maybe that could have meant I got the gold, but that’s okay. It means everything to me,” he said.
What made his success even more remarkable was that he hadn’t attempted a triple in competition since 2023, hoping to preserve his body for big moments like this. But he had tried them at a pre-Olympic training camp in Switzerland; It’s the same camp where Australia’s other major medal hope, Laura Peel, damaged her anterior cruciate ligament, ruling her out of these Games and adding a further emotional tone to the day.
He had also done them many times on the water before this at the Geoff Henke Center in Brisbane; here aerial skiers trained on a jump leading to a swimming pool, allowing them to hone their skills safely without traveling abroad. Scott said if it weren’t for him, he would have quit the sport long ago.
“That encouraged me because I knew I had unfinished business,” he said.
Xu, now a back-to-back Olympic emperors champion, is also 35, like Scott; On the two highest steps of the Olympic podium, this is living proof that age is just a number.
Can he wander again? Don’t bet against it.
“Just watching Lindsay Vonn is so inspiring at this age. I don’t think age matters. I love what I do and I’m going to do it as long as I can,” Scott said.
Winter Olympic Games are broadcast on TV 9Network, 9Now And Stan Sports.
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