Dani Scott’s tears of joy a welcome balm after years of pain

Source : ABC NEWS

Tears rained down from Danielle Scott’s eyes.

In fact, as readily as medals have rained down on Australia’s Winter Olympic squad this past week, the tears flowed from almost everyone at the Livigno Aerials and Moguls Park as the four-Games veteran celebrated a silver medal as deserved as any at this Olympics.

This was a fountain of emotion for which no tap exists to stem its flow.

And why would you want it to stop when so many tears of a more painful provenience have already been spilled?

Hugs with husband Clark Denning and her teammates made the crying contagious, spreading from person to person like a force of nature.

Alisa Camplin-Warner said she’d been on the verge of tears since the middle of the final. Needing no excuse to turn on the faucet, a hug was enough to set both off again.

“I went from seeing the close-up of her in the start gate and getting this flash of, ‘I’m going to burst into tears,’ then to feeling like I’m going to vomit, then jubilation,” Camplin-Warner said.

“It’s a roller coaster, but that’s the beauty of sport, isn’t it?

“I did have a nice moment with her before she went up and just reminded her that she has everything she already needs inside her and that we love her no matter what.

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“There’s a few extra words — I’ll keep them personal because they’re precious.

“This was all here for her and she went out and did it.

“I can’t tell you how much pressure it is to be last in the start gate and to put that beautiful jump out there.

“She well and truly, over 12 years, over 12 hours, over 12 months, she did everything possible to secure that performance and I couldn’t be more proud of her and the entire team behind her.”

Aerials is one of the most aesthetically pleasing sports on the entire Winter Olympic program.

The tapestry of aesthetic genius blends so seamlessly into the spreadsheet-like science of scores and difficulty marks, aligning artistic elegance with the rigid uniformity of numbers and judges’ ratings.

As athletes leap more than 10 metres into the air, spinning and twisting and turning and landing against a backdrop of blinding white snow and alpine majesty, you can forget that scores exist, if only for a moment.

But within the beauty lies extraordinary danger.

Watching at the base of the jump, the anticipation and anxiety rise among the spectators to a degree of extraordinary tension as each skier descends towards their ramp of choice.

The music stops and the crowd waits with bated breath for what is about to transpire.

Each landing is celebrated with gusto. Each crash with alarm, sympathy and concern.

Scott has experienced all the highs and lows you could reasonably expect, including plenty of heartache.

This is the 35-year-old’s fourth Olympics: She has previously finished ninth, 12th and 10th.

In between, she has been a four-time World Championship medallist and two-time overall FIS World Cup winner.

For at least the last two Games Scott has come in with hopes, maybe even expectations, of making the super final.

But the Olympics has been a cruel experience.

“I thought I was prepared for these moments [at] the last two Olympics,” Scott said.

“But I walked away heartbroken and I just told myself I wasn’t prepared to walk away heartbroken again.”

Scott was close to walking away from the sport after the agony of Beijing.

She was left crying tears that froze on her cheeks in Zhangjiakou after she missed out on her landing in desperately tough conditions that saw her miss the super final.

Had it not been for the ability to train at home in Brisbane on the Geoff Henke water jump, she probably would have called it quits, despite there being unfinished business with the Games.

But her decision to stick it out proved to be a good one. She won silver and bronze at the World Championships in 2023 and 2025, respectively, plus two crystal globes as the best World Cup athlete in 2022/23 and 2023/24.

But even within that professional success there were ups and downs.

Getting married in 2024 was offset by her father almost dying from an aortic aneurysm that required open heart surgery later that same year.

And this 2025/26 season did not start well, with finishes of 13th, sixth, 18th and 20th on the World Cup circuit.

That poor run of form, reaching its nadir in Lac-Beauport in Canada at the start of January, led Scott to make a heartbreaking call.

“These last few years have had a lot of highs and lows,” she said.

“And with this season not going necessarily the best it could have, I was in a really difficult place, and I told all my family and friends that they couldn’t come [to the Olympics].

“They’d booked their tickets and it was really heartbreaking to say that because I just was feeling the pressure and I just needed to focus on myself.”

This painful acknowledgement sets off more tears, the blurring of happy and sad, regretful and thankful, a blend indistinguishable from one another.

It’s what made the overflow of support from everyone at the base of the jump all the more exceptional and emotional.

And Scott’s happy tears are the joyous by-product of all this love and support.

“It’s taken four Olympics and it’s been an incredible ride of frustration; a lot of highs, a lot of lows,” she said.

“But today, honestly, I just put my heart out there.

“I left everything out there. I jumped the way I wanted to and I’m so grateful for my team around me to get me to that point.

“So this just means everything.

“This is the best day of my life. This is definitely the best day of my life.”