Snowboard cross-country skier Eva Samková won the qualification for the opening race of the World Cup of the Olympic season.
On the slope of China’s Secret Garden, where she will compete for Olympic medals at the Beijing Games in February, Chloe Trespeuch of France won the first round, a second and a half ahead of the second, and advanced to Sunday’s final.
Reigning winner SP Samková reached a time of 1: 25.09 minutes and beat Trespeuch by 1.53 seconds. Britain’s third Charlotte Bankes was 2.31 seconds behind. After the first round of qualification, Samková had a certain progress between the final sixteen and the second part no longer had to go.
“The boys had a great shot and I was fine and I’m happy. The lead surprised me,” Samkova praised. Before qualifying, she managed only one of the two training runs.
“There were some misunderstandings with the organizers. I then had an hour and a half, so I tried to warm up well, concentrate extremely on the qualification and in the end it turned out great,” she described.
On one of the longest tracks, she managed to drive first. “I tried a lot, I stomped and I was quite tired at the finish,” Samkova admitted.
When she finished, she had a lead of 2.31 over one of her biggest rivals, the Italian Michele Moioli. “I thought the timekeeper broke. This is a nice encouragement, but Sunday will be a new day. Especially not to rest on your laurels,” she decided.
Radek Houser placed 34th among the men and missed out on two places.
In his fourth start among the elite after the first race, Houser was among the thirty-two runners-up, but dropped three places after the second lap. He also ran twelve hundredths of a second.
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