New Zealanders Ruby Star Andrews and Sylvia Trotter have failed to qualify for the women’s freestyle skiing Big Air finals at the Winter Olympics.
Trotter finished 21st in the 27 strong field, while Andrews was 24th. Only the top 12 qualified for Monday’s final at Livigno.
Trotter’s best of her three runs was her first, when she logged a score of 83.00, but she was unable to follow that up posting scores of just 20.72 and 38.00 in her final two runs.
Andrews had a tough day, completing just two of her runs with scores of 44.50 and 48.25.
Defending gold medallist Eileen Gu of China, though, overcame a flubbed landing to make it into the finals.
After a solid first jump, the 22-year-old Gu could not land cleanly the second time around. She skidded on her side and one of her skis snapped off, sending her down to 17th place.
That put pressure on Gu to excel in her third jump, which she did. Instead of playing it safe, she chose a more complex trick and nailed it to temporarily move into first.
Meghan Oldham of Canada eclipsed Gu and ended the night top of the leaderboard. Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland, the bronze medallist at Beijing 2022, was in third place.
In big air, skiers launch themselves off a jump and perform as many flips and twists as they can before landing. Judges assess height, technique, originality and other factors.
The combined tally of each skier’s two best jumps determined which 12 of the 27 competitors advanced to Monday’s final.
Two Italians, Flora Tabanelli and Maria Gasslitter, made it through to compete for a medal in their home country.
– Reuters with additional reporting by RNZ