Ski Cross, Women

Canadian women had won five of the nine medals since women’s ski cross was introduced to the Olympics in 2010, including all of the golds. The star Canadians in Beijing in 2022 were Marielle Thompson, the 2014 Olympic champion and the 2019 World Champion, and Britt Phelan, the 2018 Olympic runner-up. The dominant skier going into Beijing, however, was Sweden’s Sandra Näslund, who had won the event every time except one in the most recent World Cup season, and was the 2017 and 2021 World Champion.

Näslund won the seeding run, with Fanny Smith of Switzerland, the 2018 Olympic bronze medalist and runner-up at the last two World Championships, in second and Germany’s Daniela Maier in third. Thompson placed fifth, with Phelan seventh. The 1/8th and quarterfinals went as expected, with none of the major contenders failing to advance.

As the field tightened in the semifinals, however, there was room for only four to move on to the big final, and Phelan came third in a heat that saw Maier and Smith place first and second. In the final, Näslund won the gold medal with ease, with Thompson and Smith coming in second and third respectively. After reviewing the race, however, the judges created some controversy by handing Smith a yellow card for improper contact with Maier on the final jump. Despite protests from both skiers, this bumped Maier into the bronze medalist position, while some spectators claimed that similar actions from Thompson were ignored. After the Games ended, however, an appeals commission for the sport determined that the contact “was neither intentional [n]or unavoidable” and that Maier had finished officially in fourth, giving Smith the bronze medal. However, this was appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and in December 2022, the CAS decision was to award two bronze medals for the event, to Maier and Smith, which was approved by the IOC. Smith was finally given a bronze medal for this event at a ceremony at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 18 April 2023.