Teenager Kirsty Muir qualified for the Winter Olympics ski big air final – but fellow Team GB athletes Katie Summerhayes and James Woods missed out.
Muir, 17, was seventh with a score of 157.50 in Beijing while Summerhayes agonisingly finished 13th on 136.50, with the top 12 advancing to Tuesday’s final.
“I was really happy to land my first jump, as I had crashed during practice a bit.” Muir said after scoring 89.25, which was the second highest individual score in qualifying.
The Scot said it was a dream come true to compete at an Olympics and she was “really excited” for the final as ski big air made its Games debut at a former industrial estate in Shougang.
“I can clean up the grabs and there’s a few little things I could improve on so I just want to go ski my best in the final,” she said.
“Everyone goes to a final with hopes of doing their best and just seeing how it goes and that’s what I want to do.”
Muir won silver in big air at the 2018 Winter Youth Olympics but has had more success on the senior World Cup tour in slopestyle, which she will also contest in Beijing.
Canada’s Megan Oldham, 20, topped qualifying and there was relief for home favourite Eileen Gu after the 18-year-old came through in fifth place with solid scores on jumps one and three.
In the men’s competition James Woods failed to land his first two runs cleanly and was quickly out of the running for a place in the final.
He said afterwards that the plan was to win gold but he had attempted combinations that had not been done before.
“I wanted to put on a show but the goal is to come in and win these competitions. It’s disappointing not to make the finals but I knew how hard qualification would be,” Woods said.
He will now switch his focus to ski slopestyle which he said was “a little bit more my thing than big air”.
He added: “The course looks big on the TV but it’s not that massive, perhaps it’s not as big as I’d hope it would be. I’m going to stare it down and it’ll be sweet.”
Norway’s Ruud Birk led the men’s qualifying with 187.75 but there were a number of big name casualties who failed to make it into the top 12, including World Cup leader Matej Svancer of Austria, Switzerland’s Andri Ragettli and the USA’s Nick Goepper.
Source: bbc
