Jakara Anthony – the bravest ‘scaredy cat’ on the slopes

By the way Jakara Anthony OAM hurls herself into competition with an unmissable sense of purpose and courage, it’s easy to presume the Olympic gold medallist lives by a ‘no fear’ creed.

That’s why it’s a shock to hear Australia’s winter wonder woman confess that deep down she’s more ‘scaredy cat’ than ferocious lioness.

“I can be a pretty scaredy cat,” Anthony revealed in her NSWIS Lights Up Series 2 episode before suggesting her inner fear acts as an essential safety valve.

 “But there’s also a genuine risk to what we’re doing. We do an extreme sport; things go very wrong when they go wrong . . .  so, I think it’s probably kind of healthy to have a little bit of a fear with what we do.

“However, it can’t be the overriding factor – the fear – but it’s something that’s always there in the background. Some days it’s a bit stronger than others.”

Having a whirlpool of thoughts swirl through her mind during a competition – including fear, drawing motivation, embracing resilience and balancing the weight of expectation – makes the mental side of Anthony’s sport as much a battlefield as the bone-jarring moguls course she uses to express herself as an artist does their canvas and paint.

“I’ve definitely gone through times in my career where expectations have got the better of me – and I’ve felt that pressure,” she explained. “I’m a bit of a perfectionist, but if I can use that to my advantage, then that’s what drives me to keep trying to improve every day.

“[It] can be overwhelming sometimes, and then there’s also expectations from other people. That’s one of those other things you can’t control, and when you’re listening to those [expectations], it can make things get pretty tricky and feel overwhelming.

“There’re so many different ways you could go about resilience, but I think right now, for me, it’s just being able to kind of roll with the punches and get up and try again no matter what you face.

“It’s a pretty difficult sport, there’s a lot of different things you need to be able to master, and then there’s all those other things that come with it like all the travel, being away from home, all that kind of stuff.”

And the cruellest realisation of all for this self-confessed perfectionist is no matter how much Anthony pushes herself to achieve perfection, she’ll never attain it.

“We’re always chasing perfection in our sport, but it’s a judged sport so that score 100 out of 100 doesn’t exist,” she said. “The courses are all so different, so it looks different on every course, you know.

“What I skied on the Beijing course [to win the Olympic gold medal] is very different to a performance I would put down somewhere else, but I think I did a really great job on that night for what the course was like – and I’m pretty stoked if some people think that’s perfect. I’ll take that!

“But that’s one of the realities of our sport . . .  I will never do a perfect run, even though I’m striving to do that.”

Anthony said fulfilling her childhood dream of winning the Olympic gold medal in 2022 was the result of her and coach Pete McNiel – who has mentored Anthony since she was 12 and been with her as she graduated through the NSWIS and Olympic Winter Institute ranks – leaving nothing to chance in their build up to that Games. 

“We did such a phenomenal job at leaving no stone unturned,” she said. “So, when it came to the day to actually do it, we knew that we’d given ourselves every chance possible to go out there and take that home and put down the run that I knew I needed to . . . I was really proud of it.”

And with the introduction of the ‘dual moguls’ – which pits competitors against one another in head-to-head duels – Anthony is aware there’s a train of thought she could return from Milano Cortina with two gold medals.

“It’s pretty special; it’s a fair privilege to be in the spot where people think that you could go into the Games and take home two gold medals,” she said. “Obviously, I would love that but, again, results [are] something out of my control.

“It is the end goal. But if I’m thinking about that every day, I’m not going to be ticking off those little bits along the way that I need to do. So just trying to stay a bit more present in what it is I can do now to set myself up for success.”

Daniel Lane, NSWIS