FREESTYLE SKIING-SKI CROSS: Australia’s three competitors in the women’s Ski Cross at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games have completed their seeding runs in slow wet conditions at Extreme Park but Sami Kennedy-Sim and Jenny Owens had small falls on the tough course.
FREESTYLE SKIING-SKI CROSS: Australia’s three competitors in the women’s Ski Cross at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games have completed their seeding runs in slow wet conditions at Extreme Park but Sami Kennedy-Sim and Jenny Owens had small falls on the tough course.
Sami Kennedy-Sim on Olympic debut was the first Australian away, starting 19th. She had trouble at the technical start combination and due to not having enough speed she had a small fall getting up a steep wall. She recovered to complete the course in 1:38.51 to be ranked 25th.
Katya Crema, 25, followed Kennedy-Sim and the Victorian skied the course well to be seeded 11th with a time of 1:23.47. She was 2.02 seconds off the pace and 1.22 of this came in the top section of the course.
Three-time Olympian Jenny Owens competing in the last event of her career slid out going around a burn one-third of the way down the course. This lost her momentum for the middle section but she re-grouped and finished the bottom section of the course well. Her time was 1:59.84 and she is now seeded 26th out of the 28 skiers.
Owens was not injured and said she was looking forward to the next run. Two girls did not finish the course but all skiers qualify for the head-to head racing.
The fastest three seeds from qualifying were 2011 World Champion Kelsey Serwa of Canada (1:21.45), French veteran Ophelie David (1:21.46) and Canadian World Championship silver medallist Marielle Thompson (1:21.56).
Along with the rain there was a slight delay in proceedings when some fog rolled across the course for a short while. By the end of qualifying the rain had stopped but weather still looked ominous.
The head-to-head 1/8 finals are scheduled to start at 13:30 local time (21:30 AEDT). From there the first two in each race progress with medallists needing to have four incident free races down the tough course.
Sami Kennedy-Sim will race in heat 2, Katya Crema in heat 6 and Jenny Owens in heat 7. There are four heats with only three competitors but the Australian’s lucked out in getting a simpler draw.
