Sorry, Clark, but the wedding has slipped to number two.
Of Australia’s six medals thus far at Milano Cortina 2026, none have been such a long time coming as this silver, which Scott clutched in her custom sequinned gloves after the women’s aerials 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 won by an Australian woman – in this event at Salt Lake City 2002. Scott was 11 at the time, a few years after she’d become the youngest ever athlete to receive an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship.
Scott’s mother bought her Camplin’s book, High Flyer, and that inspired her to eventually follow in her footsteps.
“I learned that she was a gymnast. I was a gymnast, and I was looking for that next challenge,” she said.
“Before I knew it, five-time Olympian Jackie Cooper was recruiting me into the sport and I never looked back. To then train alongside Lydia [Lassila], and there’s such rich history in this sport … I wanted it just as much as those girls.”
Camplin, now Australia’s chef de mission, was just as emotional as she was.
They’d shared a moment together in the morning: “I reminded her she has everything she already needs inside her, and we love her no matter what,” Camplin said.
“There’s a few extra words. I’ll keep them personal because they were precious. This was all here for her, and she went out and did it.”
The reason why Scott’s stomach was in knots so much before these Olympics is because she’d been there before, three times, and come away shattered: ninth, 12th and 10th.
Due to the wild weather that hit Livigno this week, the whole competition was crammed into one day, rather than over two as planned. That seemed to suit Scott just fine. She sealed her spot in the Olympic final for the first time with the second-best score in qualification, and then produced the best jump of her career – a simply exquisite back triple-full, the hardest trick to pull off, for a personal best of 117.19 – to move into the ‘super final’ with supreme confidence.
The flip-side of a score so high is the knowledge that she would be last of the six athletes to go.
“It’s a lot of pressure, and I thought I was prepared for these moments at the last two Olympics, but I walked away heartbroken, and I just told myself I wasn’t prepared to walk away heartbroken again,” she said.
“So I just put one foot in front of the other. That’s what I kept telling myself: to not get ahead of anything and just to believe in my team, just one foot in front of the other.”
Scott’s execution wasn’t quite as flawless as her first jump, but not too far off. Her immediate reaction after her hands grazed the snow upon landing was excitement that she’d done enough to hit the podium – not disappointment knowing she’d probably not done enough to unseat China’s Mengtao Xu and win gold.
“I am frustrated that I didn’t keep my hands from picking up that loose change. Maybe it could have meant that I got the gold – but that’s OK. This means everything to me,” she said.
What made her achievement even more remarkable is that she hadn’t attempted triples in competition since 2023, in the hope of preserving her body for moments that mattered, like this one. She had tried them in a pre-Olympics training camp in Switzerland, though – the same camp where another big Australian medal hope, Laura Peel, hurt her ACL, ruling her out of these Games, and adding a further undertone of emotion to the day.
She’d also done them many times before that on water, at the Geoff Henke Centre in Brisbane, where aerials skiers train on a jump that leads into a swimming pool, enabling them to safely practice their skills without travelling overseas. Scott said she would have walked away from the sport long ago without it.
“That sort of pushed me on because I knew I had unfinished business,” she said.
Xu, now a back-to-back Olympic moguls champion, is also 35, like Scott – living proof on the two highest steps on the Olympic podium, that age is just a number.
Could she go around again? Don’t bet against it.
“Even watching Lindsay Vonn, she’s such an inspiration at her age. I don’t think age matters. I love what I do, and I will do it as long as I can,” Scott said.
The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
