Park City resident Emily Cook didn’t have the storybook ending Friday night at Deer Valley Resort.
The 31-year-old aerials veteran, originally from Boston, Mass., didn’t want to play it safe in a World Championship event in her own backyard; she wanted to win and went for it. But on her second jump of the evening, she made a small mistake that cost her dearly.
“I wasn’t willing to back down and do a smaller trick,” she said.
After scoring an evening-high of 96.23 on her first jump, the double-full-full flip she had been practicing over the last couple weeks became her ultimate undoing.
She said the flip was really coming together in practice, but on Friday, she made the mistake of pulling her feet in when she should have been stretching on the second rotation that led to her fall.
“All four jumps count,” Cook said. “You can’t make any mistakes and I had a little mistake.”
The event was judged on a combined-score scale and Cook’s second run was scored a 62.92, which dropped her to seventh-place overall.
It was China’s Cheng Shuang who came away with the gold medal in the women’s aerials, posting a combined score of 188.40.
Her teammate Xu Mengtao finished with the silver with a score of 188.23, while Ukranian jumper Olga Volkova earned the bronze with a score of 178.59. American Ashley Caldwell finished fourth with a combined score of 173.73.
“I feel like a rock star,” Caldwell said.
On the men’s side, Canadian aerialist Warren Shouldice jumped from sixth place to first after his second jump posted a perfect score of 139.5, the highest of the evening. He finished with a combined score of 253.66 and the gold medal.
China’s Qi Guanpgpu, who was coming off a World Cup gold medal in Lake Placid, N.Y., on Jan. 21, finished second, grabbing the silver medal with a combined score of 250.95. Anton Kushnir of Belarus finished third earning a bronze medal with a combined score of 249.63.