Gordon says warm-up fall knocked her confidence
History maker Hope Gordon blamed a mentally crushing fall in the warmup for her below-par Paralympic performance.
Gordon, from Golspie, became the first woman to represent Britain as a Nordic skier at the Games yesterday but could only finish 17th in cross-country qualifying.
The 27-year-old, who is also a star para canoeist, only started skiing a matter of months ago and remains one of the junior competitors on the power-packed international circuit.
She’s still building confidence on the snow and admits an accident before taking to the start line did little to help her cause.
Gordon said: “This morning I had quite a bad fall in the warm-up, which wasn’t great physically or psychologically.
“It definitely took a big knock on my confidence. I don’t have a huge amount of confidence at this point in the sport so given everything that happened this morning, I’m happy to get through it in one piece.
“They’ve changed the course slightly since I was on it previously – it’s just the technical aspect of that corner, and I’m not very good at the technical aspect given this is only week nine on snow.
“It affected me quite a lot – just because of where I’m at withthesport,thetechnical sideofgoingroundcorners, I’m not very strong at.
“It was definitely a bit harder today – I had to go into every corner as slow as I could which feels a bit wrongwhenyou’retryingto go round as fast as you can, but safe is faster than lying on the ground, which I was earlier.
“I took a bit of a hit there buti’mhappyigotroundit.”