Matt Graham's Winter Olympic tears after his moguls disappointment make way for utter jubilation from young star Cooper Woods-Topalovic

Matt Graham knew it as soon as he came to a stop.

In fact, he knew about 20 seconds earlier, as soon as he misjudged the top jump, skewing slightly left amidst gusty conditions at the top of the course that sent snow swirling around the competitors.

He might have known it then, but it only hit home once he slid to a stop.

That was when he raised his hands to his helmeted head, tears visibly filling his eyes through his clear goggles, the realisation that his Olympic dream was over.

«This is honestly the most pain and heartbroken I've ever felt,» Graham said.

He didn't need to tell us that, it was etched all over his face.

«I put in a lot of work over my whole career and just to be here I think is an achievement, but in the end I knew I could do so much better,» he said.

«I really felt like I could push the top guys tonight.

»Everything was there. The whole package was there. I just didn't execute."

Six months ago, Graham was one of Australia's hottest medal prospects.

Fresh from claiming the Crystal Globe as the leading moguls skier on the World Cup scene and with a second World Championships runners up medal in his possession, Graham was building nicely towards launching another assault on the Olympic podium.

Then he broke his collarbone.

Aside from wiping out his entire competitive season, Graham had to undergo surgery, training not on snow, but through a Brisbane summer at the high-performance water jump in its eastern suburbs.

It's a measure of the man that Graham refused to blame the injury for his disappointing result when he had every right to point to his disrupted preparation that could easily have stopped him from even taking the field in Beijing.

«I'm definitely never going to blame a broken collarbone on what happened