Winter Olympics Irish in action: Day two

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.

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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 on Monday Elsa Desmond made her Olympic debut competing in the Women's Singles runs in the Luge. Each athlete competed in two runs which will be tallied with runs on Tuesday to give an overall standing for the athletes.

In her first run Desmond scored a personal best by 1.2 seconds with a finishing time of 1.01.68, which was 3.263 behind the leader resulting in a rank just ahead of Moldova. However, a more disappointing second run saw Ireland’s first Luge Olympian fall behind marginally going into run three, with a time of 1.03.857, resulting in a total of 2.05.465 overall. This leaves her in 34th place.

Speaking after her second run, Desmond reflected on some of the positives from her first Olympic competition. She said: “I have so many emotions right now. I have just made history, I have just become an Olympian, it’s just amazing.”

A small mistake in the early section of the second run proved costly for Desmond who also is responsible for establishing the Irish Luge Federation.

“My start wasn’t good. I went into that first corner on the right hand side which is not where you want to be. This pushed me late into the second corner, and there wasn’t really much to salvage it at that point.

“The ice was really hard and it’s really skiddy, which means that when you get a hit like that it can take a bit of time to get it back under control. And I just didn’t really feel settled in the sled after that, and nothing quite clicked.”

On Tuesday the newly qualified doctor will go again, with one final run. Only the top-20 ranked athletes after round three will move into the final run and contest the medals.