Jakara Anthony wins Snow Australia Female Athelete of the Year after stunning FIS World Cup moguls campaign
Jakara Anthony won all three major titles on offer in the 2023/24 season. (Supplied: OWIA/Chris Hocking)
Rarely in the life of a professional athlete is there much time for rest and relaxation — not least in the midst of a record-breaking campaign.
So perhaps it was a surprise to some to see reigning Olympic moguls champion and Harry Potter fan Jakara Anthony wandering through Hogwarts at Universal Studios in Orlando.
“It’s fun when we get to do some more touristy things,” Anthony tells ABC Sport.
“The schedule can be pretty hectic, competing back-to-back and week-to-week, but we had a month’s break in the schedule so went to Universal Studios.
“It’s really cool to be able to have some experiences like that.”
Universal Studios proclaims the Harry Potter-themed amusement park “an experience unlike any other,” which is quite fitting.
It also promises a trip to the wizarding bank of Gringotts, which also fits nicely with Anthony’s year.
Because, aside from the obvious parallels of skiing with such grace and skill over the harsh, icy bumps of the world’s toughest moguls fields as if she were flying over them on a broomstick, Anthony has collected enough gold this season to fill an entire vault.
On Thursday night, Anthony capped a stunning season on snow by being crowned Female Athlete of the Year at the Snow Australia awards in Melbourne.
It was an accolade that is richly deserved after the 25-year-old completed a clean sweep of all three World Cup winner’s Crystal Globes on offer, for singles, duals and overall champion.
Anthony’s unprecedented season of dominance saw the Barwon Heads skier win 14 out of 16 World Cup moguls events.
Those 14 victories are the most by any moguls skier in history, three more than the previous mark held by American legend Hannah Kearney.
In fact, Anthony equalled an all time FIS World Cup record for ski and snowboard racers: Swiss alpine skiing superstar Vreni Schneider also recorded 14 victories during the 1989 season, in slalom and giant slalom competitions.
There is a very strong case to be made that she is currently Australia’s most in-form athlete in any sport.
Yet despite the enormity of that success, Anthony remains more focused on the process than the vagaries of the judges.
“I don’t try to take the approach where I’m focusing on the results,” Anthony said.
“Of course, I want to go out there and win every event but I think the majority of the field are out there trying to do that.
“Unfortunately the results are out of my control but for me it’s about going in and focusing on that process, doing all the little bits and pieces that I need to so I can ski the run I’m capable of.
“There were some events where I was having a bit more trouble navigating the course and it wasn’t necessarily my favourite skiing of the season, but I was still able to bring a really good performance there.
“I think I’m getting better at that in skiing the way that I do on more difficult courses rather than just trying to get up and down and survive.
“I had some performances where I was just like, that was one of the best runs I’ve ever completed, so that’s an incredible feeling too.”
On one of the only occasions Anthony didn’t claim gold on the circuit this year, she won a bronze medal in the Dual Moguls event at Idre Fjäll in Sweden in December.
The other time saw ANthony make a rare mistake — “just me misreading the conditions,” according to Anthony — at Deer Valley in February — although she recovered to take out the Dual event the following night.
“That Deer Valley [victory] was pretty special,” Anthony said.
“Every event was pretty cool, they all had different challenges but that duals final against Jaelen [Kauf] was some of the best skiing I’ve ever competed.”
It is not necessarily a surprise that coming back from adversity, however fleeting it was this season, was Anthony’s highlight of the year.
After all, the entire 2024 season was a comeback of sorts after the two-time Olympian took some time away from the slopes at the end of the 2023 campaign.
“I was in a pretty different place when I started this season compared to when last season finished,” Anthony said.
“Winning week-to-week always helps but I was out there having a lot of fun with the team and travelling with a really great crew.
“I am very lucky to have them around me. We had a great time this season.”
Anthony’s record-breaking campaign also saw her awarded the Alex “Chumpy” Pullin Outstanding Achievement Award.
Pullin, who died in a spearfishing accident in 2020, was a two-time world champion and competed at the 2010, 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympic Games.
He also acted as flag bearer for the Australian team at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
“That was a real honour,” Anthony said.
“Chumpy’s had such a big impact on everyone in the winter sport community, myself included.
“He’s left a really great legacy in the sport and it’s really cool that we can honour that on the night. I am super honoured to take that home this year.”
After bursting into the upper echelon of women’s moguls skiing with a fourth place finish at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Anthony truly has gone from strength-to-strength.
Her gold medal at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games in Zhangjiakou — Australia’s first in 12 years — was richly deserved and the fitting culmination of her ascendancy to the summit of her chosen field.
Now, with 22 career World Cup gold medals, Anthony sits in esteemed company.
Of the 29 Australians that have won World Cup events, only five-time Olympian Jackie Cooper (25) has earned more victories than Anthony’s 22.
Anthony currently sits third all time among Australian able-bodied snow sports athletes in the number of podiums achieved in World Cup events with 41 — level with trailblazing aerialist Kirstie Marshall.
It’s a record that Anthony is in no mood to sit comfortably on, and for good reason.
While Anthony was the obvious stand-out in 2024, it was another superb season all round for Australia’s snow sport athletes.
Across all Olympic and Paralympic disciplines, Australian athletes secured 53 World Cup podiums and 18 victories, claiming five total crystal globes.
The next generation also stood up, with young Australians Lottie Lodge — a moguls skier of real promise — Daisy Thomas and the mixed snowboard cross team taking home two silvers and a bronze respectively from the Winter Youth Olympic Games in South Korea.
“It’s exciting to see how they’re progressing through the sport,” Anthony said, noting the senior squad takes a very keen interest in the results of the juniors across the year.
Meanwhile, teenage snowboarding sensation Val Guseli picked up the male athlete of the year after the 19-year-old earned three World Cup podiums and topped the overall standings for Park and Pipe events in 2024.
Guseli, one of the most talented snowboarders on the planet, also landed a world record-breaking 11.5-metre jump off a ‘hip’ in Schilltorn, Switzerland last month.
The teenager already has the highest recorded leap out of a half-pipe at 7.3 metres, a record he set in 2021 and claimed from legendary American Shaun White.
Ben Tudhope was named male Paralympic athlete of the year award for the sixth-successive year, while skier Georgia Gunew took the women’s crown.