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Alpine skiers Jack Gower and Tess Arbez were both in action at the Winter Olympics on Monday, producing mixed results for Team Ireland.
Gower was competing in the Downhill event which was rescheduled from Sunday morning, and Arbez in the women’s Giant Slalom.
Both competitions were based in the Yangqing zone, with Gower finishing 31st, while a clip of a gate resulted in an DNF for Arbez.
The men’s Downhill event started at an altitude of 2179m with a vertical drop of 894m over a distance of 3152m, resulting in a challenging Olympic course. Starting in 37th place Gower produced a solid clean performance in the race, finishing 31st with a time of 1.47.61, which was 4.92 seconds behind the eventual winner Beat Feuz of Switzerland.
Johan Clarey (France) won the silver medal, and the podium was rounded off with Austria’s Matthias Mayer. Making his Olympic debut the former junior world champion was disappointed to not have finished higher:
“I’m pretty disappointed with today, but I’m lucky I have more events and I’ll try and do a better job in the next few days. It’s a great course, it’s a challenging course, the snow makes it a lot easier, but there are tricky aspects to it so it’s a great Olympic Downhill course and it was fun to ski.”
His favourite event is the Super-G, in which he competes on Tuesday. This is a similar event insofar as it is based on speed, but the speed is not as fast, and it is more technical, with the gates closer together.
“I’m definitely skiing a higher level in Super-G than Downhill, so we will see what happens tomorrow, but I will be looking forward to that one.”
Arbez started her Olympic campaign in the Giant Slalom, unfortunately being marked as a DNF following a fall in the second intermediate. The Giant Slalom, run on a course ironically named the ‘Ice River’, witnessed many casualties in the first run, with 19 athletes not finishing the technical run.
Sweden’s Sara Hector scored the fastest time in the first run, with 57.56, followed by Katharina Truppe (Austria) with 57.86 and Federica Brignone (Italy) with 57.98. Sixty athletes will compete in the second run later today, with the scores in both runs being added together to determine the overall winner. Arbez, who finished 38th in this event in Pyeongchang in 2018 was disappointed with her run, saying:
“I feel really disappointed right now, the conditions were so tricky out there, it was very icy. A lot of people came down, and it felt very different to how it was the past few days. I know I’m really pleased to be at my second Olympics, but it is hard. I will process what happened in the run with my coach and refocus so that I can be ready for the Slalom on Wednesday.”
Later today Elsa Desmond competes in the Women’s Singles Luge Run 1 and Run 2, with the times being tallied along with Run 3 and 4 tomorrow night to give an overall total. Luge is a sport where the athlete lies on their back in a supine position and propels themselves down a track - the Beijing distance for women in 0.75 miles, or 1,207 metres.