Tor-Ific

I met Torah once a few years ago and got her autograph on the cover of a magazine that featured her on the cover. I have been hoping she would do very well, and I am personally very happy for her Gold medal win and wanted to share the article here on my blog from Sydney's Daily Telegraph. I have also included a comedic clip from You Tube. She may have another career in the wings!

SNOWBOARD sensation Torah Bright has won Australia its first gold medal of the Vancouver Olympics - and its first-ever snowboarding medal - by dominating the ladies' halfpipe competition at Cypress Mountain today.

Bright, 23, overcame a spectacular first-round crash in the final to post an impressive 45.0 points in the medal round.

It was good enough to beat America's 2006 Torino gold medallist Hannah Teter (42.4) into silver, with another US rider, Kelly Clark, taking bronze with 42.2.

Australia's team flag bearer Bright looked to have blown her chance of Olympic gold when she scored only 5.9 points with her first run and had to go first in the medal-deciding round.

But she put any nerves aside to pull off the finest run of her career and take the gold.

Send Torah a congratulatory message below.

Cheering Bright on was her fiance, fellow snowboarder Jake Welch, and parents Peter and Marion, who had made a secret dash to Vancouver from their home at Cooma, at the foothills of the NSW Snowy Mountains.

Bright celebrated her victory with her coach and brother Ben at the bottom of the halfpipe, before going looking for Welch and her family.

"This is just so cool,'' Bright said as she came to terms with her Olympic triumph. ``And my parents are here! I can't believe that.''

"Maybe ask me tomorrow (how I'm feeling). I don't think it's sunk in yet.

"I was standing up there and was like, 'there's nothing I can do now, whatever will be, will be'."

"We were planning on having a big party, whether I was on the podium or not."

Bright plans to marry Welch, who shares her Mormon beliefs, in Salt Lake City in June and her parents had told her they couldn't make successive trips to North America for the Games and her wedding

The Australian had gone into today's final as the highest qualified boarder after scoring 45.8 points with her routine - ahead of Clark and Spain's surprise packet Queralt Castellet who was injured in practice and did not take her place in the final.
Bright's victory was even more satisfying because she had to overcome the physical and mental scars associated with two crashes in the lead-up to the Games that left her with concussion and kept her off the snow.

Bright's gold takes Australia's medal tally at Vancouver to two _ following on from Dale Begg-Smith's silver in the men's freestyle moguls skiing on Monday.

The gold medal was only Australia's fourth-ever at a Winter Olympics and she joins Steven Bradbury, Alisa Camplin (Salt Lake 2002) and Dale Begg-Smith (Torino 2006) at the top of the podium.

One of five children brought up in Cooma, Bright has lived close to the snowfields all her life and her Olympic gold was just reward for taking the sport to a new level in the women's competition.

Blessed with striking good looks and taking a fearless approach to her dangerous sport, Bright is already the highest-earning winter sport athlete in Australia, with an estimated annual salary of over $1 million.

But her earning power is set to soar even higher on the back of this victory.

Bright is based in Salt Lake City in the US, where she has close access to the world-class Utah snowfields and is also surrounded by people who share her Mormon beliefs.

Earlier, Cooma-raised Bright, 23, scored a massive 45.8 points with her second qualifying run to earn the right to proceed to the gold medal round.

Her biggest rival was US rider Kelly Clark, who had scored 45.4 points with her first run but crashed in her next attempt to match Bright’s score.

Bright has dominated women’s snowboarding for the past four years and will have to fall to miss the medals today.

Bright is in for a surprise after the medal event – her parents Peter and Marion have made a secret dash from Cooma to watch their daughter in Vancouver.