YANQING, China. – Asa Miller crashed out just under 20 seconds into his first run in the men’s giant slalom of alpine skiing on Sunday, leaving him with Wednesday’s slalom to accomplish his modest goal in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics here.
Miller was focused on breaking the top 50 to improve on his 70th-rank finish in his Olympic debut in Pyeongchang four years ago.
But the weather refused to smile on Miller and 32 other competitors who registered DNF or Did Not Finish across their names and two not starting. They battled falling snow–not the artificial type that organizers sprayed on the course days ago–and almost zero visibility.
Out of the 89 starters, only 54 advanced to Sunday afternoon’s second run at the Ice River, which earlier last week played antagonist to the celebrated two-time Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin in the women’s giant slalom and slalom.
“It’s certainly a bummer as the course got skied out,” Miller’s American coach, Will Gregorak, said. “It’s not good on the upper pitch. I feel bum for him but he had an excellent warm up this morning.”
So frustrated with his DNF, Miller rushed back immediately to the Olympic Village with dad Kelly.
“Asa didn’t want to ski just to finish, he wants to ski lay down and run,” Gregorak said.
“The hard part about this hill is that it comes out as you ride and it gets very slick.”
Wire reports said it was the first time snow fell during an alpine skiing race at these Olympics.
Snow has been falling since Saturday at the National Alpine Skiing Center, where athletes had been racing and training on artificial snow. A second women’s downhill training run scheduled for Sunday was canceled.
Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt recovered from an early mistake to take the lead after the first run with a time of one minute and 2.92 seconds over the course that has a vertical drop of 424 meters. Stefan Brennsteiner of Austria was 0.04 seconds behind in second and world champion Mathieu Faivre of France was 0.08 behind in third.
