By AUSTRALIAN OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

When Jakara Anthony won Olympic moguls gold at Beijing 2022, a then-unknown 16-year-old Australian freestyle skiing hopeful, Charlotte Wilson, watched the triumph on TV from another continent while battling Covid-19.

Fast forward a few years and Wilson, no longer anonymous after a stunning World Cup dual moguls triumph on the next Olympic course in Livigno, Italy, is suddenly in the mix for her own medal at Milano Cortina 2026.

It has been such a rapid rise that even Wilson did not expect it.

“I definitely surprised myself,” the now 20-year-old said of her maiden World Cup victory in March 2025, capping off a stellar debut season that saw her record five top-10 finishes across both moguls events and be crowned rookie of the year.

Even after defeating two top-level skiers in the side-by-side form of moguls earlier in the Olympic test event, Wilson still didn’t give herself much of a chance in the big final against another star, the USA’s Jaelin Kauf.

“I remember FIS (the International Ski and Snowboard Federation) asked me for an interview before the finals event, and I told them, ‘I’ll give it my best shot, I’m just going to focus on my own race’,” Wilson said.

“And then to go from that feeling of being an underdog and just trying my best to being the best at the end of the day was definitely pretty surreal.”

Her shock victory in Livigno was the culmination of a breakthrough season that unfolded even as Wilson was figuring out on the run how to be a world-class athlete.

“I definitely learned a lot about the inner workings,” she said of her first World Cup campaign.

“There was a lot of travel. I really had to make sure that I was on top of my health, taking care of myself, and also just trusting all of the training that I’ve put in.

“You don’t really get that much opportunity to train in the World Cup – it’s just competition to competition. So really just leaning into the knowledge that I’ve done a lot of work to get here and I have to just trust that I can keep doing that over and over again was a big learning curve.”

Her early-season apprenticeship took an even steeper turn when now-teammate Anthony broke her collarbone in December 2024 and ultimately missed the rest of the season, leaving Wilson, then just 19, as the unlikely veteran of the team.

“I look up to her, she’s definitely one of my biggest role models,” Wilson said of Anthony.

“I think losing her that early on in the season was tough for me because then I was kind of the old dog on the team when some other girls came up in the North American World Cups, which was strange for me considering I’d only had two starts and really had no idea what I was doing whatsoever.”

Even by then, however, Wilson had already come a long way from the teenager plying her trade on the lower-level North American Cup during the last Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, where Anthony claimed moguls gold for Australia.

“I actually vividly remember because we were in a hotel room, it was 7am, I had Covid,” Wilson recalled.

“We were trying to get home from Canada and (with) my friend from the development team, we both huddled in our hotel room watching Jakara.

“And it was a pretty amazing event to watch. Obviously, she led the whole way through and it was just super exciting and inspiring.

“It was a real confidence boost to know we have a good system in Australia, we make Olympic medallists and I guess gave us a feeling (that) I could be there one day in my career.”

That day could now be approaching when dual moguls makes its Olympic debut next February in the Italian Alps, albeit half a world away from Wilson’s roots in Jindabyne.

Her parents moved to the resort town specifically to be near the snow and they put their daughter on skis virtually as soon as she could walk. From there, it didn’t take Wilson long to find her calling.

“I started skiing when I was about three and I’ve done that every weekend since, pretty much,” Wilson said, whose younger sister Abbey Wilson also followed a winter sports pathway and is now on Australia’s snowboard cross team.

“We just did a little bit of everything every weekend.

“I got into Interschools (Snowsports Championships) and from there I really fell in love with moguls skiing and I did the junior series competitions, which are just local competitions for the club kids.

“And that’s when I realised that moguls skiing is my thing and I’d like to pursue it.”

That pursuit has already led her to heights that didn’t seem likely a year ago, with even greater glory in sight if she can back up her first World Cup campaign with further improvement in her second season in the top flight.

“I was not expecting the results that I got this season and to put myself in a really good position for next year’s Olympics,” Wilson said.

“I was hoping to get there, but I knew that it might be a bit of a stretch and it would take a lot of hard work – which it still will, but it’s nice to have a little bit more confidence going into next year.”

And if she achieved everything she did last season while still finding her feet in the big time, just imagine where that new-found confidence could take her as the Olympic year unfolds.