Eileen Gu ends unprecedented Olympic debut with halfpipe gold

“Exactly a year ago I had reconstructive ACL knee surgery in which they fractured my femur (as part of the surgery). It was just a crazy experience to go through that, and the first three, four months after surgery I didn’t know if I would make it here.

“Being able to flip it around and get on snow just under four months ago and make it to the Games and get a podium – I’m extremely proud and pretty satisfied with my performance. I left it all on the table and (am) just stoked to be here.”

Sharpe won her silver with an outstanding third run that began with a right corked 900 safety, into a left corked 900 tail, and then a right corked 1080, a switch right 360 mute, a right flare safety, and finally a left 1080 tindy to finish things off for a score of 90.75.

Rounding out the podium in third place was Sharpe’s Canadian teammate Rachael Karker, as the 24-year-old walked away with some Olympic hardware in her first Games appearance.

Karker’s hard-charging first run started out with a big left flair mute, into a right corked 900 Japan, then a left corked 900 Japan, a right flair safety, left corked 720 safety, and finally a switch left alley-oop 540 for a final score of 87.75 and the bronze medal.

“It was good,” Karker said of her day in the pipe, “We got some fresh snow last night and it was pretty windy, so that was a little harder to deal with than yesterday’s weather. But I’m super happy with being able to push through that and still ski pretty well.”

Just back of Karker in fourth place was Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru – one of the medal favourites pre-competition, who skied cleanly and technically but lacked some of the amplitude and off-axis rotations exhibited by the three women on the podium.

With women’s halfpipe in the books, the final event of freestyle and freeskiing competition at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games will be the men’s pipe competition, with the 12 best in the world set to drop in at 9:30 local time on Saturday.

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