Jakara Anthony fell so hard she had to go home. She was training on the Swedish slopes, misjudged the landing and buried herself shoulder first in the snow. The force of the impact shattered her collarbone.
“I actually fell on the drum, and then I crossed my skis and, yeah, I put my shoulder into the mogul, which, as it turns out, doesn’t go so well for you,” she says.
“I knew I had done something good, I just didn’t know what at the time.
“Something good” turned out to be something bad, a serious break that required surgery, a titanium plate and three months to recover.
A debilitating injury wiped out her ski season, but it had the enlightening side effect of reacquainting herself with her family.
For the next three months, from mid-December 2024 to March 2025, Anthony, now 27, lived with her parents Darren and Sue and her brother Matt and his fiancee Chloe at their Barwon Heads home on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula.
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Now, as he prepares to defend his Olympic moguls gold medal at the upcoming Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, he reflects on the aftermath of his injury with a feeling of love.
“I don’t see them that often,” Anthony says. “I normally come home for a week or two at a time, so it was quite special to be with them for an extended period of time.
“It probably won’t happen again in our lifetimes.”
It was a tough adjustment for Anthony at first.
Jakara Anthony with his Beijing 2022 Olympic gold medal.Credit: Getty Images
She was used to traveling the world, having to rely on her parents to be carers and drivers, while she called her brother to help pass the time – they spent hours playing Stardew Valley on Nintendo Switch.
“You never want your child to be broken. But it was a fantastic time for our family,” recalls Sue.
“We all got to live together and spend every day together, which hasn’t happened in a very, very long time and probably won’t ever happen again. So it was a really special time for us. She lost her independence, but I loved it.”
“It’s always so nice to be in the car and drive together. You don’t have to make eye contact and you can talk about all kinds of things that you don’t usually have time for one-on-one. You’re just sitting in the car together. I definitely enjoyed it.”
There was a strange symmetry to Anthony’s injury. Her journey to the top of the world in mogul skiing started with her family. She grew up in the snow for one semester every year of her childhood.
The family uprooted from their home on Victoria’s Surf Coast, took time off from their father’s construction business and migrated four hours northeast to the highlands for the winter months.
“Mum and Dad met on Mount Buller when they were seasonal workers (he was a taxi driver, she worked in a ticket office) and when they had my brother and me they said, ‘We’re going to do winters on Mount Buller’,” says Anthony.
“We went to a local elementary school and they worked on the mountains and we did a ski program on the weekends … because skiing would be something we could do as a family forever.”
Anthony on a family holiday in the Maldives with his brother Matt and parents Darren and Sue.
Anthony’s skills on the slopes flourished. She was identified as an elite talent in her early teens and by the time she was 16 she was living with a host family in Jindabyne and training with the national team in Perisher.
“She loved skiing from the very beginning,” her mother recalls. “She has that kind of personality where you can do something well but keep getting better at it. She’s always been very focused on that.”
Anthony will secure his fourth world title in January 2024.Credit: YouTube
“Having kids in the snow when they’re young is a bit [an endurance] thing – wet gloves, having to walk everywhere – and sometimes it can be really hard, but she was tough. She just loved doing it, no matter what.”
The family had to adjust to having a promising Olympian in their midst.
“Finding out that your child is identified and having to start raising income to pay for overseas camps has come as a big learning curve and that you’re sending your 13- or 14-year-old to the other side of the world,” says Anthony’s mother.
“On the other hand, it allowed us as a family to travel to lots and lots of places we wouldn’t normally go if she wasn’t doing what she was doing.”
She competes in the Moguls Women’s Freestyle World Cup in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, on January 16.Credit: Chris Hocking
Training was another challenge.
“She was pretty much homeschooled all through high school. Year 12 was the only time we got a leg up,” says Sue.
“It was like, ‘Year 12, you don’t ski, you just go to school. Just knock it out, do it; it’s too hard for everyone.’
“And it was also nice for her to be home and have that year and also see that you can miss out on some things and still achieve other things, so that was good as well.”
Anthony in action at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.Credit: Getty Images
Anthony admits she struggled at times with school, juggling homework with the demands of skiing, but managed to complete her VCE at Christian College in Highton, Geelong. He is now studying part-time for a bachelor’s degree in business.
When she started conquering the world of skiing, she also had to overcome her self-doubt.
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“I think that’s just the nature of competing in an elite sport,” he explains of his ongoing struggle with performance anxiety.
“You have abnormal pressure situations. There’s a big fear factor in sport – it’s extreme, it has consequences and I have them now.”
“It was definitely a bit of a challenge to get back on the snow [after breaking her collarbone]but we got through it all.”
Sue says the nature of her daughter’s sport means she will always have to work on her mental game as well as her physical health.
“Unfortunately, there aren’t many elements of what he does that you don’t worry about,” he says.
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“As a parent, sometimes it’s not so nice to watch. The end result, when you’re standing there with a gold medal, yeah, we like that. But it’s definitely a big roller coaster of emotions, trials and tribulations to get there.”
With her collarbone “back in one piece”, Anthony returned to the two-day World Cup race in Ruka, Finland last month and almost finished where she started.
During the last practice, she fell and landed hard on the same shoulder. She was left battered and bruised, but thankfully unbroken. Incredibly, two days later she won the tycoon gold.
“It’s probably the most nervous I’ve ever been at an event,” she says. “But I wanted to get into the starting gate and get the first one off the line.
“After the first day, I knew everything was there. It’s pretty exciting to know I’m back where I left off and I think a little better. I think I’ve got more to do.”
As Anthony steps up the competition in her quest for Winter Olympic gold, her family expects her to be right on her heels.
“That was the catalyst for us buying a motor home [in Europe]”We want to travel and watch her a little bit,” her mother says. So we will definitely be in Milan with some of our other family members and some of Jakara’s friends.”
Sue says spending last Christmas with her daughter at their family home only reinforced what she already knew.
“She’s beautiful when she’s here. She’s fun to be around,” he says. “She works really hard, like any elite athlete, but especially with the mental side of things, she’s in control of her mind. We’re in awe of the things she’s been able to achieve.”
“We don’t have the skills that she does, which is amazing when your child surpasses you in that area. She’s amazing.”
The Winter Olympics will be broadcast on Nine Network, 9 Now and Tent Sports.
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