Australian debutant Cooper Woods has produced a brilliant run to the Super final in the men's moguls at the Beijing Winter Olympics, before finishing out of the medals in sixth.
The Olympic debutant was second out of the gates in the medal round, and thrilled the Australian team with a fast, skilful run.
The 21-year-old let out a big roar as he went over the line, and was rewarded with his highest score of the night of 78.88 — but was left in sixth behind gold medallist Sweden's Walter Wallberg, who beat defending champion Mikael Kingsbury of Canada.
Pyeongchang silver medallist Matt Graham earlier missed out on the finals, after the Australian was unable to produce in the vital second qualifying run.
For Woods though it was a night to remember.
"That was the day that I have been working towards since I was a young teenager. That was an awesome night," Woods said after the event.
Woods said he was determined to improve after his 14th place in initial qualifying on Thursday.
"Over the last two years I've been working with my coach just on consistency, just laying down that clean performance, especially on a course like this, it's an extremely difficult course because conditions are getting really firm in there.
"We got the first run out of the way on Thursday night, that was definitely my most nervous and then tonight I was really motivated from the get go, just from the mistakes that I made in the Q1, so as soon as I knocked the first one out it was all just fun from there and when you’re having fun, things go well."
Woods and fellow Australian Brodie Summers went through qualifying, joined the 20-man final 1 and then produced good enough scores to advance after the field was narrowed to 12.
Summers finished 10th, bowing out of the competition, but Woods came fifth in final 2 to make the medal round, final 3.
Graham had been left at risk of missing the final after he failed to finish his first run on Thursday at the Zhangjiakou course.
Graham's lead-up to the Games had been interrupted when he broke his collarbone last December and had to have surgery.
Graham's second run came near the end of qualifying, and he needed a score of 74.49 or better to advance. But after a couple of wobbles early in the course, he found it difficult to regather his momentum and his second jump lacked the momentum to produce a solid score.
The 27-year-old finished with 65.13 in 19th spot, leaving Graham visibly distraught.
"Everything was there, the whole package was there, I just didn’t execute. I got caught up in challenging conditions with wind and firm snow, sharp moguls, and I just kind of misjudged the top jump, went left out of the top there and I was kind of chasing my tail the whole way down the middle section.
"At that point, I knew the run was more or less over, but I was just trying to fight the whole way down just to at least put a run down after the other night, I was pretty embarrassed after I did not finish."
Three other Australians — Summers, Woods and James Matheson — were also in the second round of qualification after initially missing out.
Summers was 11th after initial qualifying, and he took the second of 10 available spots for the finals, improving his score with an impressive run worth 77.93 points.
Woods was fourth going into Saturday night's event — he produced a brilliant second run, landing both his jumps before falling over just after the line.
Even with judges' deductions, Woods still ended up with 76.74 to be fourth behind Summers.
Matheson, improved on his first qualifying score with a 73.20 run in qualifying 2 - he was unable to advance to final 1, finishing 14th.
In final 1 Woods flew down the course at high speed.
He lost control slightly in mid-run, but landed his second jump — a cork 7— for a score of 77.58 which was good enough for seventh place and qualification for final 2.
Summers had some deductions on his turns, came out flying from his first air, and then landed a 1080 at the bottom of the course.
He had to wait until the second from last competitor, Finland's Jimi Salonen, failed to finish, to ensure that the Australian's score of 76.15 gave him the 12th and final spot.
