Canada, Australia split golds at freestyle World Cup opening events

CHANGCHUN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Canada and Australia split the gold medals at the season opening World Cup aerials events here on Friday.

Canadian Steve Omischl, the defending overall World Cup champion, notched 247.55 points from two jumps to clinch the first place in the Changchun Lianhuashan Ski Resort.

"I am very happy to start the season with a win and it proved that my training in the summer was good enough," said Omischl, whoalso ranked first in the preliminary round with 128.98 points. "I am the overall World Cup champion in the last season and I want to defend my title."

Anton Kushinir of Belarus took home the silver medal with 237.33 points, 1.22 points ahead of reigning Olympic champion Han Xiaopeng of China, who settled for the third place.

"It's a pity that I missed the title today, I made a little mistake in landing," said Han, who became the first Chinese to win an Olympic gold medal in snow sports when crowning at the Turino Winter Games in 2006.

"I will work harder and hopefully have better performance tomorrow," Han added.

Earlier on Friday, Jacqui Cooper collected 196.62 points to lead Australia to an 1-2 finish in the women's competition.

Lydia Lassila was second on 190.34 points while Chinese jumper Guo Xinxin came in third with 186.70.

Olympic silver medallist Li Nina, who had been considered as a hot title contender, had a disappointing finish of 12th.

"My performance is below bar today, I had problem adjusting to the change of wind direction," Li said.

"Li did not perform to her standard. It's the first event of the season, everybody was kind of nervous," said Guo Xinxin. "I think she will have better performance tomorrow."

Guo's compatriots Wang Jiao and Cheng Shuang finished fourth and fifth with 180.75 and 174.66 points respectively.

The World Cup competitions continue on Saturday in the northeastern Chinese city.