Snowboarders ‘gutted’ after crashing out

THE British snowboarding team arrived in Pyeongchang with high expectations but hit the deck hard yesterday in a miserable start to their Winter Olympic campaign.

They were already suffering in the wake of losing one of their leading hopes, Katie Ormerod, to a fractured heel in training last Thursday.

But the difficulties continued into the competition, with Jamie Nicholls, Billy Morgan and Rowan Coultas failing to reach the slopestyle final after all three crashed in at least one of their two runs.

Morgan’s difficulties can be traced to a knee injury suffered before Christmas and he was out of sorts here, finishing 10th in the second group.

The concern now is that he won’t be full strength for the Big Air category on February 21, in which he is touted as a medal hope. He said: ‘Having a week and a half off is going to be good because this has been brutal, just the sheer amount of riding.

‘I haven’t had the best practice in the run-up to these events — I’ve been taking practice where I can in and out of injuries.’

Nicholls, who is Ormerod’s cousin, felt more aggrieved, having pulled off a largely clean run in his first attempt. ‘I was gutted to see 71,’ Nicholls said. ‘I felt so confident: the right mindset, feeling really good about my snowboarding, better than I have throughout my whole career.’

Those performances summed up a difficult day for Team GB, with the sole exception of Elise Christie, who won her short track speed skating 500m heat in an Olympic record time.

Farrell Treacy crashed in the men’s 1500m speed skating and Kathryn Thomson and Charlotte Gilmartin failed to progress in the 500m.

Amanda Lightfoot equalled the best result by a British female biathlete at an Olympics with 67th place in the women’s 7.5km sprint, while Annika Taylor was 60th in the cross country skiing skiathlon. In the luge, Adam Rosen is 24th out of 40 after day one of two. Rupert Staudinger is 33rd.