Snowboarding: Anderson rakes over organizers for ‘atrocious’ conditions
BOKWANG, SOUTH KOREA— After two decades of Olympic participation, Canadian snowboarder Jasey-Jay Anderson has a certain expectation for course conditions at a Winter Games.
He felt the track at Saturday’s men’s parallel giant slalom competition wasn’t close to the appropriate standard. Anderson, who missed the cut after finishing 24th in qualification, said the slope wasn’t raked properly for the morning session.
“It’s the preparation,” Anderson said. “The organizing committee is atrocious for this.”
Course workers lined the sides of the course during competition. Some used their skis to quickly groom the snow, a process called slipping. Oth- ers rake the course near the gates before the competitors come down.
Anderson was upset after his first run, voiced his concerns when he returned to the start gate and made adjustments to his board. He noticed more slippers on course for the second session but still felt the raking was insufficient.
The veteran from Mont-Tremblant, Que., finished with a two-run time of one minute 26.76 seconds.
“They’ve got plenty of people,” Anderson said. “If you look up the hill, everyone has got a rake by each gate. They just don’t know how to use them. Some even have two people with rakes. They’re not doing anything. They’re just watching the race. Check it out, it’s abysmal, man. It’s so deceiving.”
Darren Gardner of Burlington also missed the cut for the 16-man elimination rounds in the afternoon. He was 28th in 1:26.94.
Switzerland’s Nevin Galmarini won gold, Sangho Lee of South Korea took silver and Slovenia’s Zan Kosir won bronze. Anderson believed the raking issue affected his time.
“It killed it. It absolutely killed it. You expect good conditions and you get nothing. It was like a bad training day. So if there’s nobody slipping on a training day, it looks like that.”
Austria’s Sebastian Kislinger, who finished 11th, said a number of athletes complained about the course after the morning session, but he felt things improved in the afternoon.
“It was really tricky to ride in the first two runs,” he said.
Anderson said competitors who used a straighter line and had more forgiving snowboard set-ups posted better times. He felt better about his second time, but it wasn’t enough.
The sport’s governing body, FIS (International Ski Federation), was asked for comment and a FIS media official emailed a statement from FIS Snowboard race director Uwe Beier.
“While we were unable to groom the course yesterday due to high daytime temperatures and the sensitivity of the slope, today we had an excellent co-operation with (organizing committee) POCOG and the course workers on site to prepare the course before competition and maintain it at a high and consistent level for all competitors throughout the day.”
Anderson felt he couldn’t push hard at times, adding he had to skip out on one turn because it wasn’t raked.
“I can’t do anything, I can’t work with this,” Anderson said. “Everything is (normally) set up for good World Cup conditions. This is NorAm level. Actually even Nor-Am (a lower level) is better than this. It’s pretty bad.”
The 42-year-old Anderson, who won Olympic gold in 2010, is the only Canadian to compete in six different Winter Olympics. He plans to continue competing and didn’t rule out a potential return for a seventh Olympics at the 2022 Games in Beijing.