Alpine Skiing Preview: women's downhill
Published Tue 15 Feb 2022
ALPINE SKIING: Greta Small will be in action on the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Centre's speed run for the women's downhill event.
Downhill is the fastest and most adrenaline filled event of all the alpine skiing disciplines, and the Beijing 2022 downhill course has the reputation for being one of the fastest and most difficult in Olympic history.
The course, known as 'the Rock', is 2704m long, starts at a high altitude of 2050m and descends 765m.
Greta, off the back of a terrific performance in the women's super-g, will be aiming to improve on finishing 20th in 2018 at Pyeongchang.
Weather conditions in China caused downhill training delays and cancellations, with heavy snow and low visibility making it extremely difficult for competitors to safely negotiate the course.
Visibility is critical for the downhill due to the high speeds, the need to see at least three gates ahead and minimal sudden direction changes or corrections.
Despite the challenges, Greta has had incredibly strong performances in training. She was only 3.2 seconds off the top ranked skier in a large field of 47 competitors in the last training run yesterday.
