Kirsty Muir stayed on course to win Great Britain’s first medal of the 2026 Winter Olympics after qualifying in third place for Monday’s final of the women’s ski slopestyle competition at Livigno Snow Park.
The 21-year-old from Aberdeen hit the top three in each of her qualifying runs on Saturday, top-scoring with 64.98 on her second, to reach the final behind Switzerland’s defending champion Mathilde Gremaud and Chinese superstar Eileen Gu.
Muir, who is competing at her second Olympics, arrived in the Italy with raised expectations after clinching a gold medal in the same discipline at the prestigious X Games in Aspen last month.
“I feel like my heart was maybe racing just a little bit more than usual,” said Muir. “After I put my first run down, I felt a bit of a relief and felt like I could just be a bit smoother in myself.
“Just knowing I can do it when I’m feeling a little bit nervous, when I’m feeling a little bit of pressure, knowing that I can trust myself and put it down.”
Gu, who is looking to add to the slopestyle title to the halfpipe and Big Air crowns she earned in Beijing in 2022, made a disastrous start as she fell off the opening rail on her first run and ranked a lowly 22nd.
Facing the prospect of an embarrassing exit from the competition, Gu delivered a second run score of 75.3 to qualify behind her Swiss rival, who posted the two best runs of 76.68 and 79.15 respectively.
A prospective medal for Muir could come just hours before her team-mate and fellow 2026 X Games champion Mia Brookes is expected to contest the women’s snowboard Big Air final at the same venue on Monday evening.
Huge expectation is also swirling around the 19-year-old Brookes, who must first negotiate qualifying on Sunday as she bids to become only the third Briton to win an Olympic snowboard medal, behind Billy Morgan and her friend and mentor, Jenny Jones.
Jones, who won Britain’s first ever medal on snow at the 2014 Games in Sochi, believes the duo’s relatively unorthodox upbringing has helped put them in the frame for an historic pair of podiums.
Jones, who is in Italy as part of the BBC’s commentary team, told the Press Association: “It takes a tough cookie to come from Britain and be successful in snow sports.
“You have to be quite steely to work your way to the top, and it is the individual ones who get there simply because they are able to dig deeper and find a real love for the sport.
“Mia got into snowboarding at such a young age. I didn’t even try it until I was 17, by which stage she was already the world champion. She’s got a real old-school mentality – she wears these bespoke baggy pants and she just wants to go out there ripping about the mountain.”
Jones, also a former two-time Aspen X Games champion, admitted she could scarcely have imagined the increase in popularity of both snowboard and freestyle disciplines in the wake of her success in Rosa Khutor 12 years ago.
“What excites me is that the dry slopes and snow domes absolutely blew up after 2014, because so many boys and girls wanted to try it,” added Jones.
“Mia started in a snow dome at such a young age, and Kirsty was skiing around Glenshee near Aberdeen. These are both young and exciting athletes, and they’ve got so much more of their careers to come, and people are really able to get a hold on that.”
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