Marielle Thompson competes during the women's ski cross qualifications in Livigno, Italy, on Friday.Rebecca Blackwell/The Associated Press
None of the three Canadian women in the ski cross race made it out of the quarter-finals on Friday, denying Marielle Thompson her third Olympic podium appearance.
Thompson, 33, of North Vancouver, was one of the favourites going into the race and was one of two of Team Canada’s flag bearers in the Milan Cortina opening ceremony on Feb. 7. She had won ski cross gold in Sochi 2014 and silver in Beijing 2022. She was also World Champion in 2019.
In the quarter-finals Thompson got off to a slow start among the four athletes who compete in each heat and never recovered. “I just didn’t quite nail [the start] and was stuck a little bit behind,” she said. “Then I couldn’t really get going.”
She had won the 1/8 final and had felt confident going into the next heat.
Thompson reacts as she's eliminated from competition.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
She finished 14th among a field of 32 competitors. Her Canadian colleagues, Hannah Schmidt and Brittany Phelan, finished 12th and 16th. Schmidt is the sister of Jared Schmidt, who competes in the men’s ski cross on Saturday.
The winner was Daniela Maier of Germany. Silver went to Fanny Smith of Switzerland and Sweden’s Sandra Naeslund took bronze.
Some of the ski cross athletes complained that the course, with a relatively small vertical drop and packed with fresh snow, was slow. The course length is 1,190 metres long and the drop was only 154 metres, meaning the athletes never picked up great amounts of speed.
Ski cross sees athletes navigate a slope filled with jumps, bumps and parabolic curves, some of them tight. The course, in the Livigno Snow Park, was wider than many ski cross courses, allowing the competitors to pass one another fairly easily.
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