There is a moment, somewhere between the champagne on the Singapore leg and the bacon and egg roll, when it all starts to feel real. For Cooper Woods, gold medal swinging from his neck and ribbon already fraying from a fortnight of admirers, that moment arrived at the international arrivals terminal at Sydney Airport on Thursday morning.
About 100 supporters, green-and-gold pom poms raised, plus a Qantas kangaroo mascot, were waiting. Arms went up. Fist bumps were exchanged. A loud "C'mon" rang out across the terminal commonly known as the "fishbowl." For a young moguls skier who has passed through that same terminal countless times to barely a sideways glance, it was, by any measure, a different kind of homecoming.
Woods, 25, was flanked at the Australian Olympic Committee-backed arrival by silver medallist Danielle Scott and freestyle skier Daisy Thomas, the trio representing the public face of Australia's finest-ever Winter Olympics campaign. At the Milano Cortina Games, Australia finished 14th on the medal tally, collecting three gold, two silver and a bronze. Those are the kind of numbers that would look comfortable in a summer Games wrap-up; for a country with no Alps and barely a reliable ski season, they are remarkable.
"It's cool and overwhelming," Woods told reporters at the airport. "I just saw some young mogul skiers that I've known for years and their parents, which was really cool. I didn't expect it to be this big."
The numbers, as Woods himself admitted, don't quite do it justice. He has lost count of how many people have tried on his gold medal over the past fortnight. One bystander at the airport, curious about the medallion around the young man's neck, stopped a journalist to ask which event he had actually won. The medal, it seems, was doing its own advertising.
Woods is heading home to Merimbula on the NSW South Coast to celebrate with family and friends before returning to Sydney for media commitments and then travelling to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix. His social media inbox, he admitted with a laugh, has taken on a life of its own since the men's moguls final. "We've at least got to go on a coffee date before that," he said, dismissing any rush toward the marriage proposals that have not yet arrived but which he seems to regard as only a matter of time.
The playfulness sits alongside genuine conviction about what this campaign means for winter sport in Australia. Woods is insistent that the momentum built at Milano Cortina should not be allowed to dissipate before the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps come around. "I don't think we're going to lose momentum," he said. "We're really putting winter sports on the map. People stayed up late supporting us and it's not easy when you've got to go to work and school."
Scott, who took silver in the women's aerials, arrived having asked her family to stay home during the Games so she could keep her focus sharp. That call paid off. She was greeted by those same family members at arrivals on Thursday, fresh from snapping a photo in the cockpit wearing her silver medal and the pilot's hat. The kind of detail that tells you something about the spirit of the trip home.
"The fact Cooper's still upright is impressive," Scott said with a grin. "It's been fun watching his journey. Just so proud. He really deserves it." She added, taking in the crowd around her: "We thought there'd be some people, but we didn't think there'd be this many. It's all sinking in."
Australia's winter athletes have long battled for visibility outside the Games window. Funding, coverage and public interest tend to follow the Olympic calendar rather than the training schedules of the athletes who put in year-round work at facilities far from home. Whether a standout campaign translates into sustained investment and attention is a question the Australian Olympic Committee and winter sports' governing bodies will need to answer seriously in the months ahead. The appetite is clearly there from the public. The challenge is converting a fortnight of prime-time viewing into something more durable.
For now, though, that can wait. Thursday morning at Sydney Airport belonged to the athletes, to the young mogul skiers in the crowd who got to shake the hand of someone who looked a lot like their future, and to the quiet satisfaction of a programme that dared to believe it could punch well above its weight. As Woods put it simply: "We're such a small nation in winter sports, but we pack a big punch." On the evidence of Milano Cortina, that is not bluster. It is a statement of fact, reported according to The Sydney Morning Herald.