Jason Begg Smith Jason Begg-Smith wins Australia's first men’s medal at freestyle titles

Dale Begg-Smith has become the first Australian man to win a world championship freestyle skiing medal, taking bronze in moguls in Ruka, Finland, overnight.

The result continued a record-breaking year in which the 20-year-old skier made three World Cup podiums and finished in second place on the Cup end of season standings.

It is also the second men’s world championship medal in any skiing discipline and the first since Malcolm Milne won downhill bronze in Val Gardena in 1970.

Begg-Smith qualified in fourth place behind a Finnish trio of Janne Lahtela, Sami Mustonen and Mikko Ronkainen, with pre-race favourite Jeremy Bloom of the United States – the runaway World Cup champion - out of finals contention after a major mistake on the bottom jump of the course.

In the final, the Australian started with a perfect score on his top jump, earned the highest turns score from the judges and also recorded the fastest time down the course.

But a bad landing on the bottom jump cost him valuable points, and he went into third place behind American Nathan Roberts and Canadian Marc-Andre Moreau.

With the three home-town heroes to come, no-one in the fanatical 5000-strong crowd gave Begg-Smith any chance of retaining a place on the podium.

But all three faltered, making major mistakes on their way down the 218 metre Battery Run course, the 2002 Olympic champion Lahtela producing the best result at eighth.

For Begg-Smith, taking a medal at a world championship was definitely more significant than his World Cup success this year.

“I think world champs are more important, “ he said. “They’re once every two years, and there’s no question that everyone who comes to world championships wants to do well.”

“On World Cup, someone like Janne (Lahtela) may not care all that much because he has won so many World Cups, but definitely everyone wants to do their best once every two years at the world championships.”

“I started out conservative this season and it’s paid off as the season has gone on. Just concentrating on putting down good runs allowed me to pick up the speed gradually, feeling confident because I knew I had those good runs behind me.”

“Before I was trying to go fast right away, and if you do that you’re not confident enough that you can do it every time.”

Not for the first time this season, Olympic Winter Institute Head Moguls Coach Steve Desovich was astonished at what his star athlete had accomplished.

“When you look at where we were 12 months ago and where we are now, the progress has been enormous,” Desovich said.”

“Today was a tremendous performance. The landing on the bottom air was the only thing that was sub-par today on both runs, and that’s what may have ultimately cost him doing better.”

“He has a tendency to play it very safe, so to see the speed he had in the qualification round you knew right away he was focussed and that he could produce something special.”

“His top jump in the final was a perfect score from both judges, and to have the highest turns score and virtually the highest speed – that’s very impressive.”

“If you had said at the start of the season that he would be top ten at the end of the year I would have been very, very happy.”

“So to finish second on World Cup and then pick up a medal at the world championships, well it’s been an incredible year for him.”

Of the other Australians in the field, Nick Fisher finished in 23rd place in 23.16 points, Michael Robertson in 26th place on 22.99 points and Jason Begg-Smith in 34th place on 21.53 points.

In the women’s event, the sole Australian competitor, Manuela Berchtold, finished in 23rd place on 18.88 points after problems landing her first jump.

United States skier Hannah Kearney took the gold medal on 26.40 points from Nikola Sudova of the Czech Republic on 26.31 and Margarita Marbler of Austria.

The World Championships dual moguls event will be contested on Sunday