Tess Johnson celebrates after her run at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 on Feb. 11, 2018 in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Olympian Tess Johnson gave the U.S. moguls team its first podium finish of the FIS World Cup season on Friday at the circuit opener in Ruka, Finland.
Johnson, 18, finished third in the second women’s final, holding on to the position she held after the first final. Also qualifying for the six-woman second final was her 2018 Olympic teammate, Jaelin Kauf, who finished in fifth.
This is Johnson’s first career moguls world cup podium. She won a dual moguls race in March of this year.
Defending Olympic champion Perrine Laffont of France was first with a score of 82.26, followed by Olympic bronze medalist Yulia Galysheva of Kazakhstan in second with a score of 81.48. Johnson had a score of 75.85.
Johnson, from Vail, Colorado, was one of a number of teenagers under the age of 18 competing for the U.S. at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. At just 17, she was the youngest competitor to make the moguls finals. The Games marked her first major international championship on the senior level, and she finished 12th overall.
Just two years earlier Johnson claimed silver at the junior world championships. And two years before that, at the age of 14 she became the youngest moguls skier ever named to the U.S. national team.
A total of 13 U.S. athletes were competing in Ruka, where they had been training since Nov. 20.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
