Milan (Italy) (AFP) – US-born Chinese freestyle skier Eileen Gu saw her chance of a historic Winter Olympics golden treble slip away on Monday, while Lindsey Vonn remained in hospital after her Games ended with a broken leg. Gu, one of the faces of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, was hoping to win the slopestyle crown, a spectacular event at Livigno Snow Park in which competitors must navigate obstacles and perform jumps.
But Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud denied 22-year-old Gu the first of her gold medal targets, repeating her own victory from four years ago as she scored 86.96 in a stunning second run to edge out Gu, whose best total in her three runs was 86.58. Gu charmed her adopted nation in Beijing by scooping dazzling golds in the half-pipe and big air, and taking silver behind Gremaud in the slopestyle. Now the multi-talented skier, who also has a career as a model and studies at Stanford, has to focus on her two remaining events at the Milan-Cortina Games, the half-pipe and big air.
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Vonn, meanwhile, spent a second day in hospital in Treviso, potentially facing more surgery on her fractured left leg after a brutal crash on Sunday just 13 seconds into her bid to win an unlikely medal in the downhill. Italian news agency ANSA reports that Vonn went under the knife twice to stabilise a fracture in the femur bone after the stricken 41-year-old American was winched off the Cortina d’Ampezzo piste by a rescue helicopter.
To those asking if Vonn should even have been at the start gate considering she had ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament on January 30, Johan Eliasch, the head of the International Ski Federation, said on Monday the decision had been solely hers. “This has to be decided by the individual athlete,” he said. “What is also important for people to understand is that the accident that she had yesterday, she was incredibly unlucky, one in a thousand,” Eliasch added. “This is something which is part of ski racing and it’s a dangerous sport.”
The newly-crowned men’s downhill champion Franjo von Allmen won a second Olympic gold on Monday when he partnered Swiss teammate Tanguy Nef to victory in the team combined event in Bormio. Von Allmen had been fourth fastest in the downhill on the Stelvio course before Nef laid down a near-faultless slalom run for a winning aggregate time.
Mikaela Shiffrin, the USA’s other skiing superstar alongside Vonn, will make her debut at these Games in the women’s team combined event after being paired with downhill gold winner Breezy Johnson, the USA ski team announced. Shiffrin and Johnson are reigning world champions in the discipline and they will be hot favorites for more gold. The team combined event, which is making its Olympic debut at the Milan-Cortina Games, involves two skiers from the same nation racing a downhill and a slalom, with the fastest aggregate time earning the gold medal.
US figure skating star Ilia Malinin warned his rivals he was just warming up for his men’s Olympic singles bid starting Tuesday after facing the challenge of Japanese pair Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato on his way to team gold. Malinin returns to the Milan Ice Skating Arena on Tuesday, two days after holding his nerve to help the USA retain the Olympic team title ahead of Japan. “Absolutely, this gives me so much confidence and I’m really looking forward (to the individual competition),” the 21-year-old said on Sunday with his first Olympic gold medal around his neck. “It went exactly to plan and I feel very thankful for that.”
First up will be the men’s short programme on Tuesday in which Malinin trailed Kagiyama, the Beijing Olympic singles silver medallist behind American Nathan Chan, during the team event. The free skating final takes place on Friday.
© 2024 AFP
