Moomba Masters 2004 - Melbourne - Friday The day started really cool and cloudy after the hot weather of yesterday. However, the very high winds from yesterday had disappeared, which I'm sure was a relief to the skiers. The slalom and jump preliminaries were held today, starting with the slalom. A couple of surprises in the ladies slalom. The last 4 skiers made it through to the semis as would be expected. Karen Truelove scored the best score of 5 @11.25m. Geraldine Jamin, April Coble and Emma Sheers also qualified, (although Emma only just scraped in last with 4.5 @ 12m). The other 2 qualifying skiers were out first and fourth and were Vanessa Leopold and Sarah Gatty Saunt. Sarah also managing to run 12m and score 1 @ 11.25m. The men's slalom had a couple of upsets. The first pass was with a tailwind and the current so making things doubly difficult. All skiers went out at 13m and most seemed to have no problem with the first pass. The second pass at 12m had the benefit of a headwind, but the skiers were skiing against the current as well and I'm not sure if this was an advantage or disadvantage! Two skiers missed their first pass, which is easy to do in the unpredictable Yarra River. Most of the other skiers ran 12m, which left all the work to be done at 11.25m, which proved a very telling line length, especially given the tailwind and following current. Javier Julio went out 7th and qualified with 4 @ 11.25m, which proved to be a difficult score to beat. Kyle Eade out 10th scored 2.25 @ 11.25m and Jason Seels out 11th scored 3 @ 11.25m. Fabrizio Merlo and Jason Parades both qualified and Jeremy Newby Ricci skied 17th and scored 2 @ 11.25m, other skiers had scored 2 @ 11.25m, but Jeremy's higher ranking meant that he would qualify ahead of them, but this was not certain yet. Chris Rossi followed Jez and also scored 2 @ 11.25m, meaning the he would qualify ahead of Jez and that one of the following skiers would have to score less for Jez to qualify. Fabio Ianni scored 3 @ 11.25m and Ty Oppenlander became the first skier to run 11.25m, although very late out of 5 buoy and just scraping round 6! He then went on to score 1 @ 10.75m. Jodi Fisher followed with 3 @ 11.25m. Steve Cockeram was next and ran 2 very easy passes at 13m and 12m, however the boat was delayed after his 12m pass and it was announced that he had missed the gates, putting him out of the competition. Chris Parrish ran a very easy 11.25m, despite a blip at buoy 2 and then proceeded to run 1.5 @ 10.75m, leaving Andy Mapple left to ski. Andy also ran his 11.25m pass, although he was very late at buoy 5 and had to lean very hard to get to 6, he then proceeded to qualify first with 2 @ 10.75m. Steve Cockeram's unfortunate 12m pass also meant that Jeremy Newby Ricci just managed to qualify - not bad for his first effort on the Yarra River!. A good headwind had arrived by the time the jump started, although it tended to be gusty so just as unpredictable as the current in the water. The ladies jump results were close to expected with Emma Sheers qualifying first with a distance of 50.2m. She passed on her second jump, without even cutting to the ramp, which demonstrated how difficult the conditions are. Jane Fladborg qualified second with 49.4m. The men's jump provided some excellent entertainment with the last 11 skiers qualifying as would be expected, along with Rodrigo Miranda from Chile who skied very well in last November's 21 and Under World Championships. Lance Green's score of 58.6m meant he was "on the bubble" right until the end. Curtis Sheers who jumped 58.9 had a Mandatory re-ride and had to jump again to qualify, fortunately he managed 62.4m and qualified. Freddy Kreuger, who skied second last, passed on his first jump, jumped 63.9m on his second jump and refused really late on his 3rd jump, crashing into the safety netting that stopped him hitting the rocks at the side of the river! Jaret Llewellyn also had a mandatory re-ride and it was this jump that decided whether he qualified or not, fortunately he jumped 64.6m. The longest jump of the day being 66.3m by Mark Lane. Unfortunately for Lance, all the re-rides out-jumped his 58.6m, so he failed to qualify. Report by Jill Howard