By Nicole Jeffery
Australia’s newest Olympic gold medallist Cooper Woods has credited his Sport Australian Hall of Fame mentor, rugby great John Eales, with giving him the mental tools to become an Olympic champion. Surprise winner Woods put together a sensational series of runs on Thursday (12 February) to win the men’s moguls event at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, becoming Australia’s first medallist of the Games, and the seventh Australian in history to win a Winter gold medal.
As a younger skier Woods was paired with former Australian rugby captain Eales as part of the Sport Australian Hall of Fame scholarship program in 2022, and he said that relationship had played a “massive part” in preparing him to triumph at Livigno in the Italian Alps.
Just before he began his glorious final run, Woods went through the mental preparation that Eales helped him to develop before the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, where he finished a promising sixth on debut. “John Eales is a wonderful guy, and he’s been very supportive in my sporting academics, and he’s been really cool,’’ Woods said. “He gave me a bit of a three-step advice, which is something I’ve taken into a lot of high pressure moments, where it kind of gives me a sense of time, and presence and discipline. We’ve talked a lot about discipline in what we need to achieve, and it’s something that I’ve also carried across into life advice in major moments like that. So, I’m very thankful to have John in my corner.”
He said he had been in touch with Eales before he began competing this week. “I told him that I still had in mind some of the same things that we did back then, some cues and some really good advice,’’ Woods said. “When he was goal kicking, he had a three-step process, and that was something he introduced to me to help me align myself and get myself ready to compete.” “My three cues are – I kind of close my eyes and I go through my run, and then just as I push out of the gate, I kind of give it a deep “Let’s go.” And the next step is to try and remember every little point of the journey down the run, because that helps me to be present.” “The “Let’s go” is a bit of affirmation and positivity. It’s like: ‘This is your moment, let’s not hold back, let’s show the world what you can do’. Especially being Australian, we should be kicking back at Bondi and here we are taking charge in Italy. Hopefully there are few more of these (medals) coming out.’’
That focussed and positive approach worked brilliantly as Woods produced the best run of his life under the most pressure, as the last skier to drop in the Olympic final, a position he had never experienced before. Woods, from Merimbula on the NSW South Coast, was part of the SAHOF scholarship program in 2021 and 2022 and is the first graduate from those years to win an Olympic gold medal. SAHOF has been issuing scholarships to promising young athletes since 2006, providing financial support and pairing each athlete with a Hall of Fame member for mentoring.
In 2020, the Sport Australia Hall of Fame expanded the program from five scholarships per year to a three-tiered, 32-scholarship program that’s open to all elite junior Australian athletes between the ages of 15–21.
Woods was a Tier 2 recipient in 2021 and moved up to Tier 1 in 2022, which is when he was paired with Eales, in what has become a world-beating combination. John Eales AM said “Cooper Woods is such an impressive young man and I’m genuinely delighted for him. I noticed this from the first time I met him when he asked a lot of questions and listened intently to the answers. He was always very proactive in reaching out and such a pleasure to work with. I reckon I got more out of the experience than Cooper did.”
Since the program commenced, 70 Sport Australia Hall of Fame Members have provided their time and expertise to be one-on-one mentors. Across all three Tiers, 236 athletes from 56 different sports have been awarded a scholarship through the program with many having gone on to represent Australia successfully at Olympic/Paralympic and World Championship level.
Image Credit: Chris Hocking | AOC
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