Gremaud wins Olympic freeski slopestyle gold
Feb 15, 2022·Freeski Park & Pipe
Mathilde Gremaud (SUI) slipped off a rail and broke a binding on her opening run of the women’s slopestyle final, but came back to lay down the gold medal-winning score on her next run at Genting Snow Park on Tuesday.
Hometown hero Eileen Gu (CHN) missed out on a second gold at Beijing 2022 by a fraction of a point and had to settle for silver.
For Gremaud, silver medallist at PyeongChang 2018 behind compatriot Sarah Hoefflin, the damaged equipment proved to be a welcome distraction.
Gremaud commented:
“The first run was not a good start. My binding broke and I had to go back up and check everything out with my coach to change my ski and make it ready for my next run. It was a good distraction for me. It put my mind somewhere else instead of thinking, ‘What am I going to do? I just crashed on my first run’. I emptied my head, and I was thinking about my binding and was like, ‘Why did you break?’ It was as good distraction.”
Gremaud is the first freestyle skier to win two medals in slopestyle at the OWG. Also with her bronze in big air just a couple of days ago, she now has a complete set of medals in freestyle skiing and is the second female to accomplish this after Kari Traa (NOR) in women’s moguls.
Gremaud scored 86.56 on her second run, forcing Gu to dig deep on her last effort after disappointing on her first two runs - one that saw her composing herself halfway down the slope after a fall. The pressure mounting, 18-year-old Gu landed a double cork 1080 with a Japan grab and cleanly finessed the rest of her third run.
Gu, the 2021 slopestyle world champion, finished with a score of 86.23, a mere 0.33 behind Gremaud.
The home hero commented on how her mum helped turn the final around for her:
"My mum knows me very well and she knows the way my brain works with pressure. I've done a lot of work, read a lot of psychology books, did a lot of research on my own brain to see how I deal with pressure. And now we know that I perform well under it.
"So, in the first round, in the second round, I wasn't fully in the zone, if that makes sense. I wasn't in that headspace. And my mom could see that, so I talked to her after the first run. She was like, 'Pretend your second run is your third run, pretend you have no more chances'. I was like, 'I'm trying', but I guess my imagination is not that good.So yeah, it came down to the real third run, and I did it - for that, I'm so, so proud of myself."
Gu and Gremaud join Xu Mengtao as the only freestyle skiers to win two medals at a single Olympic Winter Games, all doing it at Beijing 2022.
Kelly Sildaru (EST) claimed bronze, the first Estonian to win a medal in Olympic Winter Games freestyle skiing.
“I still have halfpipe coming up in a few days, so I still have to focus on that,” Sildaru said in regards that the Olympic competitions are not over just yet for her.
Sildaru, who will celebrate her 20th birthday on 17 February, was the gold medallist in slopestyle at the 2020 Youth Olympic Games. She is the first athlete representing Estonia to win an Olympic medal in freestyle skiing.
Sildaru becomes the youngest Estonian Olympic medallist, summer or winter, after Alfred Schmidt (22 years, 120 days) won silver in featherweight weightlifting at Antwerp 1920.
Tess Ledeux (FRA), the big air silver medallist at Beijing 2022 and 2017 slopestyle world champion, finished seventh.
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Courtesy of Olympic Information Service
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