Mitch laments ‘dumbed down’ course
AUSTRALIAN Winter Paralympics co-captain Mitch Gourley has criticised PyeongChang organisers for going too far in reducing the difficulty of an alpine ski course from the Olympics.
Standing skier Gourley, from Barwon Heads, will begin his third Paralympic campaign when he competes in the downhill event tomorrow as Australia bids to end its 16year gold medal drought.
The 26-year-old lamented downhill course changes since the Paralympics test event a year ago. “They unfortunately kind of dumbed it down a little from last year,” Gourley said.
“They took a bit of the terrain out and it’s a bit less fun, and add that to the soft, slow snow, it’s pretty grindy.
“The terrain — the rolls and jumps that were there last year, they really smoothed them out and shaved them down.
“I think they were very big during the Olympics — the built terrain that they’d made was very sharp and quite aggressive, and I think in taking that out, they maybe went a little bit too far.”
But Gourley, who has a congenital below-elbow deficiency and is ranked eighth in the world in para-downhill, conceded organisers weren’t entirely at fault. “Part of it is because there’s more snow this year,” he said.
“So that automatically makes those things fill in a lit- tle bit and little less aggressive.”
Gourley will contest all five alpine skiing events in pursuit of his first medal, with his best effort a fifth in the super-combined four years ago in Sochi.
He is confident snow conditions will hold up despite forecasts PyeongChang could be around 15C warmer for the start of Paralympic competition than it was a month ago.
“If it gets super warm, they can salt,” he said.
“There’s a couple of different compounds that help the snow refreeze, so you can get a really good surface in that sunny weather.”