Snowboard, freestyle courses safety blasted
Rosa Khutor (Russia) (AFP) - Competitors and coaches blasted Sochi's Olympic snowboarding and freestyle courses as "retarded" and "far from perfect" as a fresh series of spectacular crashes marred the events on Tuesday.
Australian women's halfpipe favourite Torah Bright, who crashed in training, led the criticism, claiming organisers were not calling on expert course builders.
"The people who are constructing the pipe aren't the greatest at their craft and it makes it challenging for us," she told Australia's Network Ten.
Her coach and brother Ben Bright was less diplomatic, launching a bitter tirade at the state of the run at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park.
"It is dangerous at the moment. You've got a mixed event going on -- moguls and halfpipe together -- so it's fucking retarded," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
US star Shaun White, who will be chasing a third successive halfpipe gold, said the course was sub-par for the Olympics.
"I'm hoping they figure out some way to make the pipe a little more manageable. It's definitely far from perfect," he said after Monday training.
There were more crashes in the women's slopestyle freestyle skiing heats on Tuesday as competitors struggled with the conditions.
Gold medal favourite Kaya Turski -- the world champion and four-time X-Games winner -- was knocked out after crashing on both her runs in the heats.
The second time she stayed down motionless for a short while before gingerly skiing down to the finish, where she appeared unhurt.
But the 25-year-old from Montreal said it was all part and parcel of the sport.
"They were just two separate mistakes. I just didn't have much confidence going into the first run. The second run was going alright, not my best, but then I just hit a bump and overdid it. It just happened," she said.
Earlier in the Games, in the slopestyle snowboarding competition, the course came under fire after a number of heavy crashes.
White pulled out of that event after crashing in training while medal favourite Torstein Horgmo had to withdraw after breaking his collarbone in a training fall.
There were also numerous crashes in moguls. American Heidi Kloser tore her cruciate knee ligament and broke a thigh bone in another accident.
Yet not everyone agrees that the courses are a problem.
American snowboarder Danny Davis, competing in the halfpipe, said the best riders are taming the course.
"There's a couple of guys who are making it work," he said. "Shaun (White) is pretty good in these conditions, Ayumu (Hirano of Japan) is so light I think he floats on the bumps, Iouri (Podladtchikov of Switzerland) has been riding pretty darn well."
Podladtchikov, one of the gold medal favourites, said the pipe is narrower than he is used to but said he is happy with it and Canadian veteran Crispin Lipscomb said the pipe would simply separate the wheat from the chaff.
Women's halfpipe champion from Salt Lake City in 2002, Kelly Clark of the US, is also convinced the pipe is manageable.
"It's riding better than it did last year in the test event," said the five-time X-Games winner and bronze medallist from Vancouver.
Bullish US snowboard cross competitor Nick Baumgartner insisted that the danger was exactly what attracted athletes to the sports.
"If it's dangerous and scary and I overcome that and do well, that's what I'm looking for," he said.
"I'm looking for that rush, that adrenaline. That's the reason I do it, that's what brought me to this sport."
