The Stelvio Ski Centre appeared like a shaken snow globe, as snow fell intensely from the sky, piled up quickly on the piste and continued for over an hour. You may see course crew step in and shortly strive to shovel it to the facet after a racer handed by. Visibility was additionally, unsurprisingly, poor.
Finally, the storm brought on, or no less than performed a task in, 49 Run 1 DNFs (didn’t finishes). That is a 51 % clip, abnormally excessive for a slalom. Crossing the end line was an accomplishment in itself.
Among the many DNFers was Lucas Pinheiro Braathen (BRA), who recorded the quickest Sector 1 and Sector 2 occasions earlier than slipping and lacking a gate. The 25-year-old emerged victorious in Saturday’s big slalom, changing into the primary athlete representing a South American nation to earn a medal of any type on the Winter Olympics.
Loic Meillard (SUI) celebrates within the end space after successful gold within the males’s slalom occasion at Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio.
Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP by way of Getty Photos
Paco Rassat (FRA), a multi-time Cup winner this season, additionally skied out. So too did upstart Eduard Hallberg (FIN), veteran Manuel Feller (AUT) and residential nation hero Alex Vinatzer (ITA). The lone American competing, River Radamus, additionally DNF’d. The listing went on.
Meillard was one of many athletes that really remained inside placing distance heading into the second run — and strike he did.
The pristine, blizzard-less conditions served the skiers left standing nicely, at giant. Solely two within the prime 30 DNF’d and regardless of a majority of Run 1 racers not qualifying, a breadth of nations had been represented in Run 2 because of this. The primary 14 athletes had been all from totally different nations, together with Haiti (Richardson Viano), Japan (Shiro Aihara) and Lithuania (Andrej Drukarov).
Finally, it was Meillard who reigned supreme and can go away the Video games with a rainbow of Olympic medals.
On Wednesday, Mikaela Shiffrin, Paula Moltzan and the world’s prime technical skiers have yet one more alternative to go for gold within the girls’s slalom. Run 1 of the ultimate Alpine snowboarding occasion of the 2026 Winter Olympics begins at 4 a.m. ET, adopted by Run 2 at 7:30 a.m. ET. Each will stream stay on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.
