Sochi Halfpipe

She's a snowboarder, not a skier, but if this criticism is valid there might be a serious problem:

"OLYMPIC officials were working frantically overnight to repair and remake the Sochi halfpipe after a series of complaints by athletes, including Australia’s defending champion Torah Bright, about the poor quality of the course.

Bright joined the chorus of riders criticising the pipe for being too narrow to be able to pull off the high-flying tricks for which they have trained. “It’s brutal and all you can do is kinda laugh in there,” Bright told the Ten Network.

Bright said the course wasn’t up to standard and hit out at the quality of the coursemakers.

“The people who are constructing the pipe aren’t the greatest at their craft and it makes it challenging for us,” she said.

The Olympic course designers had been working all day on the course, delaying training for eight hours. Part of the problem has been the recutting and repairing of the pipe using different consistencies of snow in the warmer conditions in the past two days. The variations are now creating bumps.

“The halfpipe has been a little challenging,” said Australian halfpipe coach Ben Alexander.

“In the first training session it was a little bit too vertical and then they worked really hard to cut the pipe back a little bit and take a bit of the vert out of it and in doing so it created a little bit of softness in the bottom, trying to match two different snow consistencies.

“So once people started using it today they kind of broke through the bottom and made it really bumpy and difficult to ride so it was another challenging session today but it was the same for everyone.”


MORE: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/sochi-winter-games/torah-slams-dodgy-sochi-halfpipe/story-fnl6xsc2-1226823059596