Cross-country skiing: “I was off to a good start until I fell in the second round,” says Mélissa Gal
This Thursday, in the individual skate race at the Olympic Games in Milan/Cortina, Montblanc’s Mélissa Gal started with bib number 1. At the end of a race marked by a fall, she took 51st place, more than three minutes behind Sweden’s Frida Karlsson.
“It’s a bit special to start with the first number. You have to run your race, make your own way”, she explained to L’Equipe at the finish. “I was off to a good start until I crashed on the second lap. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and on a fast descent, a small gap…”.
Despite this incident, Mélissa Gal continued her effort right to the end. “The aim was to tear myself away from start to finish, without thinking and letting the audience carry me.
Although she regretted the fall “which is easy to avoid and wastes a lot of time”, the Frenchwoman now prefers to look ahead to the rest of her programme: “I don’t know if I’ve really turned the page on the sprint [26th on Tuesday], but right now I’m looking ahead to what’s to come. I don’t have the time to go to the bottom of the hole to get back up. We’ll move on and take stock.
Read also
- Frida Karlsson crushes the individual skate and wins a second gold medal, Léonie Perry in the top 10
- Johannes Hoesflot Klæbo’s advice to double Olympic champion Frida Karlsson
- Léonie Perry, the seventh Frenchwoman to score an individual top 10 at the Olympic Games
- “It worked incredibly well”: another demonstration from the Swedes in the individual free skate
- Another Olympic bronze medal for Jessie Diggins
- Eighth in the individual skate, Alison Mackie posted the best result for a Canadian in 20 years
