Pyeongchang: Jamie Anderson survived high winds which disrupted the crash-filled women’s slopestyle snowboarding competition to successfully defend her Olympic title Monday.
The 27-year-old took gold despite briefly going over in her final run, with Laurie Blouin of Canada earning silver and Finland’s Enni Rukajarvi taking bronze.
Britain’s Katie Ormerod and Australian Tess Coady both suffered competition-ending injuries on the slopestyle course, which features high rails and huge jumps to negotiate in the swirling winds.
Sunday’s qualifiers were scrapped because of the strong wind, and the final was also delayed for more than an hour Monday as organisers waited for the gusts to subside.
When the competition finally got underway, a number of athletes hit the deck before Anderson, Blouin, who sported a black eye and Rukajarvi filled the podium.
It came a day after 17-year-old Coady, the youngest member of the Australian team in South Korea, pulled out after wrecking her left knee in training. Coady ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), ending her first taste of an Olympics and leaving her facing several months on the sidelines.
The young Australian blamed the wind for the crash, writing on Instagram: “Well Olympics came to a screeching halt today for me… got picked up in the wind on the bottom jump in practice and my ACL was not a big fan!”
Ormerod was ruled out after breaking her heel in training after earlier fracturing her wrist on the Pyeongchang course.
