Organisers scramble as weather disrupts penultimate schedules

ORGANISERS scrambled to reorganise the Alpine mixed team parallel race for the final day of the Beijing Olympics after high winds yesterday forced the competition to be postponed.

Team officials and organisers agreed to hold the event, which is only its second edition, today at 9am (0100 GMT) despite several teams being scheduled to fly home.

The decision is likely to mean some teams have to rearrange their flights and accommodation bookings but it was not immediately clear if all would remain to compete.

Alpine team officials will hold their usual pre-race “captains’ meeting” at 5pm when the start list will be agreed upon, and only then will it be clear how many of the 15 teams will remain in the rescheduled event.

Olympics and International Ski Federation (FIS) officials were keen to avoid the complications that would come with the rare case of an event not being held.

The closing ceremony for the Beijing Games is today at 8pm.

The weather forecast for today is for slightly better wind conditions earlier in the day.

Yesterday’s gust at 9am were recorded as between 24 and 28 metres per second. For today, the gusts are forecast between 19-22 m/s.

The weather also disrupted competition at the National Crosscountry Centre in Zhangjiakou.

The men’s 50km cross-country mass start, one of the sport’s blue riband events, was postponed by an hour and shortened to 30km due to the high winds.

Not everybody in the field was happy with the decision.

“Of course athletes health comes first but we knew it was gonna be cold ... Look to other sports who moved their events a day earlier. This is not the way to go if we want to develop our sport!” – Irish skier Thomas Maloney Westgaard tweeted.

The women’s 12.5km biathlon event, originally scheduled for yesterday, was brought forward to Friday due to weather concerns. — Reuters