Canadian Olympic freeskier Cassie Sharpe had a horrific crash at the Milan Cortina Games on Thursday night and needed to be stretchered off the halfpipe on a sled.
The 33-year-old and two-time Olympic medalist landed awkwardly during qualifying, falling on her left side and sliding face-down along the halfpipe.
Medical staff treated her for several minutes before pulling her away on a stretcher. Sharpe was seen acknowledging the crowd response by raising her arms as she was taken off the halfpipe.
Despite the spill, Sharpe still qualified for Saturday’s final thanks to her first run, which was better than all but two competitors’: Great Britain’s Zoe Atkin and China’s Li Fanghui.
Sharpe, Atkin, China’s Eileen Gu and Fanghui, as well as Kate Gray of the United States are among the 12 finalists. However, it’s unclear if Sharpe will be available for Saturday’s final.
She previously won the gold medal in halfpipe at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games before taking silver in Beijing four years later. The sister of snowboarders Douglas and Darcy Sharpe, Cassie recently had her first child with husband Justin Dorey, a fellow halfpipe skier.
Gu advanced to the final in freeski halfpipe at the Milan Cortina Games, shaking off a fall during her opening run Thursday night.
The American-born Chinese freeskier clipped the lip of the halfpipe on the third trick of her first run, knocking her left ski off and sending her skittering to the bottom of the course.
That set up a pressure-packed second attempt that she had to complete cleanly to stay in contention.
Gu didn’t go conservative and laid down a run full of risky tricks, including one that took her soaring 14 feet over the edge of the halfpipe. She came close to clipping her ski on one landing but managed to stay upright.
Her run earned 86.50 points, good enough to place fifth among the 12 skiers who advanced to the final.
‘I was relieved,’ Gu said. ‘I just kind of had this moment of like, ‘Thank you.’ You know, I shouldn’t be in this position to begin with, but I’m glad that I was able to reinforce my sense of self-belief at the moment when it counted.’
Atkin said qualifying is stressful because competitors only get two chances, as opposed to three runs in the final.
‘I feel like qualifiers sometimes is more nerve-wracking,’ the American-born Atkin said. ‘I’m really happy I was able to kind of manage that nervousness and put down a clean run. It’s honestly a really big relief.’
