A 21-year-old Australian skier of Maltese descent, Nicole Parks, has helped the Maltese in Australia keep their interest in the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games alive as she made her debut in the Games and over three days (February 6, 8 and 9), participated in the Ladies’ Moguls event.

The news was carried in the latest issue of the ‘Voice of the Maltese’ (in Australia) under today’s date. The following is part of the story as reproduced in the e-magazine (Issue No. 69).

Along with the other two Australian participants in the women’s team, Nicole even managed to reach the final as she finished eighth. Britteny Cox (fourth) and Taylah O’Neill (seventh) were the other girls in the team.

The Aussie girls had earlier missed out on automatic entry to the finals as they failed to place among the top 10. In the qualification round Cox had finished 12th, O’Neill 16th and Nicole 17th.

In the second qualification round the Australians girls made great improvement with Cox placing fourth, O’Neill seventh and Nicole eighth.

In the final at Extreme Park, Britteny Cox took fifth place, while her teammates Nicole Parks and Taylah O’Neill both had fantastic Olympic debuts to progress from qualifying to Final 1.

To reach the top 20 finals was a goal of the pair and they delivered, with O’Neill stopping in 15th place and Ncole Parks 16th.

In the final the Aussie trio faced stiff competition in defending gold medallist and reigning World Champion Hannah Kearney (USA) and the three Dufour-Lapointe sisters (Chloe, Justine, Maxime)

from Canada.

In the end, the Canadian sisters Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe went 1-2, with defending Olympic Champion Hannah Kearney (USA) claiming Bronze.

Parks currently occupies 21st place in the world ranking list.

For Nicole, born in Cooma, and living in Jindabyne, Australia, her participation was a great occasion. She has dreamt of competing at the Olympic Games as a moguls skier since she was a child.

Her dream became reality in Sochi in a year, yet this dream was in danger of getting shattered when

a few days before the start of the Games she survived a spectacular crash as she was training in Sochi (see photo).

Luckily, the moguls skier managed to walk away with just a pair of broken sports glasses after the

crash.

Nicole is the daughter of a Gozitan born mother, Josephine Buhagiar from Ghajnsielem, and her Australian father Andrew. She must be the pride of her family for reaching such heights.

Mrs Parks is currently on holiday in Gozo and Nicole is expected to join her in Malta’s sister island in a few days’ time.