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Britt Cox Is The Most Dominant Australian Athlete of 2017. It's Time You Met Her

No Aussie has ever dominated this sport like Britt has.
She clearly doesn't know you're not supposed to eat yellow snow.
David Ramos via Getty Images
She clearly doesn't know you're not supposed to eat yellow snow.

Britt Cox is amazing. That's the first thing you need to know.

The second thing you need to know is that the 22-year-old Aussie mogul skier won the World Championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain, overnight. Here's part of her winning run. Nailed that landing!

This was no one-off performance. In February, Cox wrapped up the World Cup title too. You win the World Cup by accruing points for performances throughout the year -- and Cox was dominant, winning seven of the 11 events she contested. (Her results are here.)

But could the skier from the border city of Wodonga, Victoria, take a whole season's worth of awesome form to a ski resort in Southern Spain and make it count on the day? Of course she could.

FIS Freestyle Skiing Facebook page

You'll note that the picture above shows a slushy half-melted ski slope. That's Spain in early spring, for you. Unsurprisingly, Cox said it reminded her of the snow back home.

"It was so unbelievably warm, it felt like skiing back in Australia and I had so much fun today, you couldn't ask for better weather for the final event of the season," she said.

She got an extra bunch of flowers for her FANTASTIC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP QUALITY SMILE.
Getty Images
She got an extra bunch of flowers for her FANTASTIC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP QUALITY SMILE.

Moguls occur naturally on recreational ski slopes when skiers carve grooves out of the snow surface. They're generally smoothed out by snow grooming machines each night, but one or two steep runs are usually left aside for bump lovers.

Want to know who skis those runs? Real skiers, that's who. They say there are two types of skiers: those who can ski moguls, and those who can't ski. In other words, hurling yourself down a field of bumps the size of Volkswagen Beetles is not easy. Respect to you, Britt.

Here's the full video of Cox's world-beating run.

She's so smooth these days, so efficient yet unflustered in her action. Cox has been around for a while. She was the youngest athlete from any country to compete at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, then came 5th at Sochi 2014.

But she's now -- officially -- the world's best by any measure. So how did she get so good so quickly this year?

"A lot of people have been asking me what clicked this season and it was more a matter of all the training I have done over a number of years finally paying off for me," she said.

"One of the things my coaches are huge advocates for are basics and fundamentals and I've learnt from them that to be successful consistently you have to master those basics and fundamentals."

Cox is pretty much the most successful Australian athlete we can think of in any sport so far in 2017. You should also know that Matt Graham, Australia's best male mogul skier, has also had a good year, as we told you in January.

Indeed, the entire Aussie winter sports team is just about the best-performed group of Aussie athletes so far in 2017. For this, much credit must go to the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia, which for over a decade now has cleverly targeted a few key events suited to the smaller ski hills in Australia.

Meanwhile, these Freestyle Skiing World Championships are far from over for Australians. Australia's ageless aerial skier (OK, she's 35) Lydia Lassila is about to compete. She's already won three of the four World Cup events she's contested this year.

The snowboard world championships are also being held concurrently, also at Sierra Nevada. Australia has several big event winners who will be competing, including Scotty James, who won the snowboard halfpipe at the X Games this year.

He was hungry for success.
RJ Sangosti via Getty Images
He was hungry for success.

Want to know a cool fact? The last time the Snowboard World Championships were held in Spain (in 2011), Australia topped the medal tally.

Yep, we're a true blue snow sports nation these days. And it's one heck of a strong Aussie team assembling for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Korea, which are now just 11 months away.

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