Lead image: Sam Mellish
You could almost taste the tension in the air at the bottom of the Phoenix Park slopestyle course. Team GB’s Izzy Atkin had just put down a run that was technical, clean and stylish, putting her in bronze medal position. But there were three skiers still to drop. Three skiers who’d qualified above her, all of whom could bump her off the podium.
Up at the top of the course her coach, Pat Sharples, was a nervous wreck. “I was literally throwing up,” he said afterwards. “I’d not had much breakfast, just water and bananas and it was all too much.”
“I was literally throwing up,” her coach Pat Sharples said. “I’d not had much breakfast, just water and bananas and it was all too much.”
Johanne Killi dropped first, but didn’t make it down cleanly. Her Norwegian team mate Tirill Sjaastad Christiansen came down next, and made it to the bottom of the course but then she reverted on her final trick. Last but not least was Emma Dahlstrom, the Swedish former X Games gold medallist who’d qualified through first into the final.
