- Three American men and one American woman advanced to the finals in free ski slopestyle qualifiers.
- Mac Forehand, Alex Hall, and Konnor Ralph will represent the U.S. in the men’s final.
- Avery Krumme, 17, was the sole American woman to qualify for the finals, finishing in fourth place.
- Athletes described the qualifying round as highly stressful, with the primary goal being to advance.
LIVIGNO, Italy — Mac Forehand was in a flow state. He knew before his last jump that his second run of men’s free ski slopestyle qualifiers Saturday that he nailed the second run of two.
Which was a good thing, because his first run did not go according to plan, and the two-time Olympian feared a repeat of his personal disaster at the 2022 Winter Games in China where he fell off the first rail twice and didn’t make finals.
I was just telling myself, ‘We cannot do that again,” he said.
This time, Forehand finished sixth and led the way for three Americans to advance to the final on Tuesday. Joining him will be defending gold-medalist Alex Hall (eighth) and Olympic rookie Konnor Ralph (10th).
‘I was definitely nervous not landing my first run,’ Forehand said.
Forehand said it was the most nervous he’s ever been for a qualifier.
‘It’s hard to explain it,’ the Connecticut native said. ‘That gut feeling was pretty hard out there.
‘The feeling of not making the final is worse than falling in a final. Just to make it through is a huge relief, a huge accomplishment in itself.’
Avery Krumme, 17, was the lone American to qualify for finals on the women’s side with an impressive second run of her own to finish with a surprise fourth place. She felt similarly.
‘Making finals is as much success as I could have. It’s mind-blowing for me,’ said Krumme, who switched her competing nationality from Canada to the U.S. last year. ‘I’m beyond stoked … I’ve already, I’ve already got the success, I feel like.’
For all of the finalists, nerves were the necessary ingredient for a successful qualifying day.
Hall admitted he was less nervous than he thought I’d be.
‘I guess the beauty and maybe the beauty of the position I’m in is, I don’t know, it’s still just skiing,’ the 27-year-old veteran said. ‘It is what we do and it is our lives and it’s an extremely important moment, but life goes on after the Olympics. And so I think that it’s easy to tell yourself that once it’s also easy to tell yourself that you try and lie to yourself, or I try and lie to myself almost, and get to the top and you realize how much you care, and obviously you care.’
Hall said qualifiers are always stressful. Making it to finals is a simple goal with a lot of emotion behind it.
‘It doesn’t matter where, you just got to get in,’ he said.
Like Forehand, Hall also plans on switching things up in the finals.
‘You’re trying to play a little strategy, not show all your cards, but you don’t want to try to easy of a run,’ he said of qualifying.
If that were the case, the judges would not award the athlete with a score high enough to advance to finals. It’s a delicate balance.
‘In many ways, (qualifying) is more stressful, almost,’ Hall said. ‘Because then when you get to finals, for most of us, we’re just gonna be trying pretty much our hardest runs possible.
‘And for me, at least personally, when I know I’m trying my hardest skiing, my hardest run, even if I mess up, I’m a lot more OK with that than if I would have tried too easy of a run, landed it, and just not been kind of in the mix.
“So that’s the nice part about making finals. We’ll have three runs, so I’m sure we’re all going to be trying really hard runs and you kind of just go for it.’
Ralph’s nerves were of the waiting variety. He lingered in ninth place for a while, then was bumped down to 10th. He watched a few of his competitors’ runs and then stopped because he realized he couldn’t do anything about his position.
‘Super stoked to (qualify), that was nice,’ he said.
Ralph added: ‘For me, if I make a final, usually I’m just going to go for it. I don’t want a top-five. I want a podium if I land my run. I’m not too worried about the result either. I just want to ski the best I possible can – put it all out there.’
Krumme has had some ‘wow’ moments since landing in Milan this month. But seeing her name just behind reigning gold-medalist Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland, the reigning Olympic champion who led all qualifiers, and the highly-decorated Eileen Gu of China (second), left her nearly speechless.
‘I’ve looked up to them for a really long time in skiing,’ said Krumme, who believes the judges rewarded her creativity for landing a ‘misty’ jump – an off-axis one-and-a-half rotation going backward – off a rail. ‘They’ve been around for a while, so I’m just living the dream that I’ve always wanted. It’s crazy for it to actually be happening.’
Krumme said she’ll head into Monday’s finals with no expectations for herself. Dropping into her second run, she knew she was outside of the qualifying bubble.
‘I knew what I had to do, and I’m super glad that it went well,’ she said. ‘My mind turned completely off, and I went through the course, and then came to the end, and was like, ‘Wow.’ I saw my score and couldn’t believe it. So I was really stoked and I still am.’