Australia's Danielle Scott showed she's emerging as one of the world's top aerial skiers with a World Cup silver medal in the season-opening event in Beijing.
Scott pushed China's gold medallist Mengtao Xu - the Olympic silver medallist - to the limit, leading on the scoreboard until Xu's last run down the hill, while American Kiley McKinnon was third.
The event was held in the Bird's Nest, the iconic 2008 Summer Olympics stadium, which was transformed into a World Cup aerial skiing venue for this weekend's double header.
In the gripping six-woman round to decide the medals, both Scott's and Mengtao's jump selections were the same, a double full full, however, Mengtao attracted a score of 95.88 from the five judges while Scott's overall score was 92.35.
Scott's impressive performance capped off a strong showing by all three members of the Australian team. Scott qualified in first, Laura Peel in fourth and Renee McElduff in seventh.
Overall, McElduff finished in eighth while Peel was ninth.
It was 24-year-old Scott's second podium finish in a World Cup event.
Australian team coach Jeff Bean was delighted.
"It was very satisfying to have all three girls in the final", he said.
"They had a good training camp in Ruka (Northern Finland) to start the season where the focus had been around working the basic elements of their jumping and to see all that work come though, I am sure it feels really good for them all."
It's a second sporting career for Scott who was the youngest athlete to be offered a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport when taken in for artistic gymnastics at age seven.
She retired from that sport at age 13 after reaching an elite level and tried verious other sports before aerial skiing caught her attention and she was recruited by five-time Olympian Jacqui Cooper.
The team lines up again on Sunday night (AEDT) for the second stage of the weekend's double header - a team's competition, which is a new format for this season.
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