Dale Begg-Smith has continued his brilliant 2007 ski season with a silver-medal winning performance at the World Championships in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy.

Begg-Smith went down in the final to Canadian skier Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau, but made the podium in a major championship for the third time in three attempts.

The silver followed the 22-year-old's gold medal at the Torino Olympics and his bronze at the 2005 World Championships.

Rousseau skied his best run for the season in the final, scoring 27.17 points to the Australian's 26.65.

American Nathan Roberts took the bronze with 26.63 points.

Olympic Winter Institute team-mate Ramone Cooper also made it through the elimination round, qualifying one spot ahead of Begg-Smith in sixth place, but could not repeat the performance in the final, finishing in 15th position.

OWI head moguls coach Steve Desovich was thrilled with Begg-Smith's result.

"To me, it's a tremendous performance," Desovich said.

"Dale was under the gun in the final, and he put down a fine quality run."

"To run silver in a major competition under any circumstances is an exceptional result and to do it after the season he has had is just tremendous."

"He wasn't quite perfect today, but I'm ecstatic."

"To make the podium in the three major events that he's done, when the pressure is really on, that's a remarkable effort."

"Dale is just such a consistent performer. He's a competition genius, really. He knows what he has to do and he just delivers."

"Rousseau went all out and was skiing on the fringe and it looked like he was going to go out, but he managed to hold on and credit to him."

The other two Australians in the field finished well down, Nick Fisher in 43rd place on 11.02 points and Michael Robertson 50th on 6.80 points.

A dual moguls event will be contested early Sunday morning Australian Eastern Summer time.

Also in last night's aerial skiing qualifying event, Jacqui Cooper and Liz Gardner both made it through to the final.

Gardner was in ninth place on 155.30 points and Cooper one place further back on 155.53 points after missing the landing on her opening double twisting double somersault and her follow up double twisting triple.

Both will start with a clean points slate in the final, due to start around midnight Saturday, Australian Eastern Summer time.

Torino Olympic gold medallist Evelyne Leu topped qualifying with 193.08 points.

Courtesy OWI/Sportcom