AERIALS:

Women’s aerials: Canada's Bauer, defending champ Leu fail to qualify

Feb. 20, 2010 — SRC Staff Report     ►Photo: Veronika Bauer trains (Mike Ridewood, CFSA)

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WEST VANCOUVER, B.C — At 16, Ashley Caldwell might be too young to know any better. At 37, Jacqui Cooper might be too old to worry anymore.

The American kid who's barely starting and the Aussie veteran who wrote the book advanced to the finals of Olympic women's aerials Saturday, a head-over-heels adventure where the next concussion, shattered foot or torn-up knee is always lurking around some corner.

Cooper finished 11th, and Caldwell got the 12th and final spot on a day when Americans Emily Cook and Lacy Schnoor also advanced — marking the first time the United States has put a woman in the Olympic finals since 1998.

Defending Olympic champion Evelyn Leu of Switzerland, who hit her head hard on the ground in training earlier in the week, fell on her second jump and failed to move on. Alla Tsuper of Belarus finished first and Li Nina of China, the 2006 silver medallist, finished second.

Canada’s only entry, Veronika Bauer, finished 15th and failed to advance. Bauer was third after her first jump, but she failed to land her second jump and fell out of contention for the finals.

"If I would have done anything right on that second jump, I would've been in the finals," Bauer told CTV. "But here I am and I can't believe it yet. I don't know how I'm going to deal with it once it sinks in."

Bauer, 30, won gold at the 2001 World Championships and has four World Cup wins, but will likely retire without a medal at three Olympics.

Cooper is an anomaly in the aerials world, still contending despite her age. In 2007, she won her unprecedented fourth World Cup title — a tribute to her longevity and willingness to take ever-increasing risks in a sport that demands it.

"I am so passionate and so in love with what I do," Cooper said. "It's being able to be the best at something. I'm the best that's ever lived in my sport, and that's enough to keep me going."

Her Olympic résumé, though, is still missing something. She has qualified for her fifth Games but has yet to win a medal.

A crash during qualifying in 1998 left her with leg and head injuries, unable to compete. In 2002, she was a favorite, but shattered her knee a few weeks before the Games and was also on the sideline. Finally healthy to compete in 2006, she scored a world-record 213.56 points in her two qualifying jumps but crashed twice in the finals.

On Saturday, she went with a pair of conservative jumps, kept her skis in perfect unison and landed them both cleanly — good enough to take the second-to-last spot for Wednesday's finals.

"I'm old and I'm tired," Cooper said. "I'm going to go and have a nap this afternoon, another nap and then I'm going to relax tomorrow and I'm going to relax the next day and then I'm going to fire up."

For Caldwell, it could be a matter of calming down.

She's so new to the upper echelons of this sport, she hadn't even competed in a World Cup event until January.

A member of America's developmental Elite Air Program, Caldwell started showing some Olympic promise late last year, then suddenly found herself on the Olympic team.

The landing on her first jump was messy — sideways with split skis and needing a huge effort simply to stay up. She thought that would wipe her out of the final, but when several other women fell, Caldwell stayed in the top 12. Twelfth, to be exact — good enough for an extension on what has been a week full of excitement at the Olympics, including a brief bump into Shaun White that really freaked her out.

"Making it feels like every other experience I've been talking about, except 10 times better," Caldwell said. "It's hard to put into words how excited I am."

Her folks were enjoying it, too, and said so much has happened so fast.

"Go back two months, and we didn't see this," Mark Caldwell said. "It was so much of a longshot, we didn't even talk about it."

She will be a longshot in the final, while her teammate, Cook, will have a legitimate shot at the podium.

This was a sweet day for Cook, a 30-year-old Massachusetts native now residing in Park City, Utah. She was forced to watch the 2002 Games from a wheelchair after fracturing and dislocating bones in both feet in a particularly nasty crash before the Olympics.

Doctors told her she'd be lucky to walk again, let alone jump, but she was back for the 2006 Games, though a fall left her teary eyed at the bottom, forced again to watch the finals from the stands.

This time, she'll be part of the show.

"I was up there, really just kind of appreciating the moment, how great it is to be part of the Olympic Games," Cook said. "Everyone out here has worked for years and years."

Nobody has worked at it longer than Cooper, whose list of injuries is about as long as her résumé.

"I give props to anybody that's still doing aerials over 30," said Lacy Schnoor, the second-ranked of the three American who made finals. "I'm 24 years old, had two knee surgeries, my shoulder subluxes. I've had so many injuries, I'm lucky to go another four years. All those older girls are amazing."

At 37, Jacqui Cooper might be too old to worry anymore.  SRC

— The Canadian Press contributed to this report

Cypress women’s Olympic aerials qualification results

1. Alla Tsuper, Belarus, (105.64, 90.12) 195.76 (Q).
2. Li Nina, China, (97.11, 94.99) 192.10 (Q).
3. Guo Xinxin, China, (88.08, 101.08) 189.16 (Q).
4. Cheng Shuang, China, (94.29, 86.62) 180.91 (Q).
5. Emily Cook, Belmont, Mass., (86.31, 93.94) 180.25 (Q).
6. Lacy Schnoor, Draper, Utah, (87.77, 81.74) 169.51 (Q).
7. Assoli Slivets, Belarus, (84.17, 85.22) 169.39 (Q).
8. Xu Mengtao, China, (92.74, 75.81) 168.55 (Q).
9. Lydia Lassila, Australia, (85.65, 81.90) 167.55 (Q).
10. Elizabeth Gardner, Australia, (89.00, 75.60) 164.60 (Q).
11. Jacqui Cooper, Australia, (87.88, 75.11) 162.99 (Q).
12. Ashley Caldwell, Hamilton, Va., (79.66, 82.68) 162.34 (Q).
13. Nadiya Didenko, Ukraine, (87.77, 73.49) 161.26.
14. Olga Volkova, Ukraine, (82.53, 78.25) 160.78.
15. Veronika Bauer, Canada, (94.47, 65.99) 160.46.
16. Evelyne Leu, Switzerland, (93.75, 61.75) 155.50.
17. Jana Lindsey, Black Hawk, S.D., (64.10, 87.59) 151.69.
18. Bree Munro, Australia, (74.37, 69.09) 143.46.
19. Tanja Schaerer, Switzerland, (60.63, 65.10) 125.73.
20. Olga Polyuk, Ukraine, (60.37, 55.36) 115.73.
21. Martina Konopova, Czech Republic, (66.84, 48.23) 115.07.
22. Sarah Ainsworth, Britain, (52.44, 52.92) 105.36.
23. Zhibek Arapbayeva, Kazakhstan, (48.89, 38.09) 86.98.

Judges: Morten Skarpaas (AI), Norway; Pipsa Pohjavirta (AI), Finland; Jim Bates (AI), United States; Susan Verdier (AI), Canada; Oleg Kitov (AI), Russia; Tina Tanaka Sundequist (LA), Japan; Reinhard Krampfl (LA), Germany.