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| *Crash site |
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| *Walker in hospital |
THEY’VE been described as the craziest athletes at the Sochi Paralympics.
All it takes is one slight bump to start in motion a fall
that quickly descends into out-of-control chaos for sit skiers who are locked
into a chair attached to a ski and are hurtling down the mountain at over
100km/h.
The downhill race - where competitors start at the top of a
steep, winding mountain and it’s fastest to the bottom wins - was marred by
repeated carnage on Saturday when 11 of the 27 competitors in their mono-skis
failed to finish.
Some were lucky and skid off course before sliding sideways
into a fence.
Others like American Tyler Walker, Briton Anna Turney,
Mexican Arly Velasquez and German Franz Hanfstingl fell violently, bounced
repeatedly off the ground and catapulted high into the air before finally
coming to rest hundreds of metres from where the drama started.
In some cases the ski snapped from their chair and equipment
worth thousands of dollars was sprawled across the snow like a train wreck.
Walker
cartwheeled several times before coming to a stop where he lay motionless
before medical staff arrived and he was airlifted from the mountain in a
helicopter.
The US
team later announced the 27-year-old, who was born with lumbar sacral agenesis
and had both legs amputated at the knee at the age of four, was stable and
conscious.
He later tweeted: I'm ok! I don't remember crashing but I
didn't break anything. Thanks so much for all the support, it means... http://fb.me/6FqH5lU7G
Great
Britain’s Anna Turney, who is paralysed from
the waist down, remarkably emerged from her high-speed crash at Rosa Khutor
with little more than a swollen lip.
“This is an extreme downhill damn it and I really wanted to
win it,” Turney said.
“I really wanted it and at the end of the day I got my line
slightly wrong, then it was so bumpy and I just popped out,” Turney said.
“It’s challenging and certainly where I crashed that was
bumpy, but I think the course guys have worked really hard and made it as safe
as they could.
“I don’t think it was unsafe, it was challenging.
“There’s a knuckle you bounce over and then it’s quite like
undulating snow, ice really, and everyone is like ‘oh, it’s so dangerous’ but
it’s a downhill at the end of the day.”
Turney barely had time to think when her sit ski kicked into
the air and she was tumbling downward.
“I was just thinking ‘go straight, go straight, go straight’
and trying to be on a flat ski.
“I came over that jump, I landed on one edge and bounced
onto the other edge, I felt like I was thrown around a bit and suddenly I was
falling because it’s very quick - it’s so annoying.”
Some sit-skiers have no legs while others have little or no
function in them and they are strapped into a large seat that sits inches off
the snow with only their arms free to hold out-riggers in the hope they can
stay on course.
Austrian Matthias Lanzinger was a world class able-bodied
skier before losing his left leg in a racing crash and is now at the Sochi
Paralympics where he competes in the standing class with a prosthetic.
Days before competition began Lanzinger said he was in awe
of the sit skiers.
“For me in disabled sport, all the guys are heroes,”
Lanzinger said.
“But the sitting category are all absolutely crazy and
heroes.”
Australia
has one sit skier in its team in Sochi,
Victoria Pendergast, who will
compete in the slower but more technical slalom event this week.
-courtesy: Foxsports
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