In less than 30 seconds on a field of icy bumps pitched steeper than most recreational ski runs, Australian freestyle skier Jakara Anthony will try to do what no woman ever has. She will attempt to defend her title from Beijing 2022 and win back-to-back Olympic gold in moguls.

At 27, Anthony is Australia’s greatest gold medal hope at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics. She is the most successful Australian World Cup skier ever, she carried the flag at the opening ceremony last week and featured on the cover of Vogue in January. The latter a rare crossover moment that underlines how Olympic gold can propel an athlete into the national consciousness.

But moguls is a sport that does not care for expectation. And history suggests that even the very best rarely repeat. Only one mogul skier, Canada’s Alexandre Bilodeau, has ever won Olympic gold twice in a row. No woman has managed it.

“There are very few people who do back-to-backs in any sport,” says Ann Batelle, a four-time Olympian turned professional moguls coach in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

“Livigno’s course is 28 degrees which is steeper than many – ours in steamboat is 25 degrees. That makes it even more challenging. In my opinion, it’s a good thing, because it will separate the best athletes.”

Anthony arrives in Italy ranked world No 1, with a résumé unmatched in Australian winter sports. Her trophy cabinet includes 26 World Cup gold medals and seven Crystal Globes – the esteemed trophy awarded to the athlete who accumulates the highest points total in their discipline across a World Cup season.

Raised in Barwon Heads, Anthony began skiing moguls at Mount Buller and joined the World Cup circuit at just 15. Her 2024 season was one of the most dominant ever recorded in women’s moguls: 14 wins from 16 starts and three Crystal Globes in a single campaign.

For audiences unfamiliar with moguls, the event might look chaotic: skiers bouncing down Livigno’s 235-metre field of icy mounds at speed, launching aerials off two jumps before sprinting to the finish. But speed accounts for just 20% of the total score. Another 20% comes from jumps. The remaining 60% is judged on turns.

Judges reward smooth carved turns rather than skidding, with controlled absorption as skiers’ legs compress and extend over each mogul. Batelle, whosemountain base of Steamboat has produced more Olympians than any other town in the US, says the best runs look almost calm.

“Your legs stay together, your arms are out in front, your upper body is quiet,” she says. “You ski the line that water would take if you poured a pitcher at the top of the course.”

This is where Anthony separates from the field.

“She makes a really nice carve,” Batelle says. “Her upper body doesn’t move. Her hands are perfect. She’s incredibly clean and makes very few mistakes.”

The Australian is also peaking at the right time. After missing most of last season with a broken collarbone, she returned this winter with three World Cup wins. Her most recent victory came in January at Waterville Valley in the US, where she was the only woman to break the 80-point barrier, scoring 81.17.

The 2018 Olympic champion, France’s Perrine Laffont, remains Anthony’s biggest threat. Laffont finished fourth in Beijing and the notoriously fast 27-year-old is again chasing the podium. The 2022 silver medallist, American Jaelin Kauf, has 16 career World Cup wins and 50 podiums. She dominated the World Cup season while Anthony was injured, winning the overall, single and dual moguls Crystal Globes. Another threatening American, 20-year-old Elizabeth Lemley, is returning from an ACL injury but in remarkable form – finishing second to Anthony at Waterville.

Added to this deep field is the unique pressure of the Olympic spotlight: two weeks of intense global media attention as winter sports briefly dominate the mainstream sporting consciousness once every four years.

“Right now, expectations on Jakara are that she will win a second gold,” Batelle says. “If she doesn’t win, it will likely be seen as a failure to the media and to many people – which is brutal.”

Anthony has spoken about how the weight of an Olympic campaign shifts with each Games.

“Each Winter Games has been a different experience for me,” she said in January. “My first one was going in with no real expectations, then the second as a gold medal favourite … These ones I’ll be going in as the defending champion. There’s still a lot to learn.”

Batelle’s advice is for Anthony to “put the blinders on”.

“If she starts thinking, ‘I have to win again,’ it will mess with her,” she says. “Just ski – and Jakara knows how to ski.”

Gold in Beijing made Anthony a household name. Milano Cortina will determine whether that moment stands alone or marks the beginning of something unprecedented.