Freestyle skier Perrine Laffont from France followed in the footsteps of her great compatriot Edgar Grospiron at the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang.
Twenty-six years after her triumph at the premiere of the mogul piste discipline in Albertville, the 19-year-old runners-up won her second gold medal for the Grande Nation, hoping for a medal from her co-favorite – it was the most coveted one with the slightest margin. Katharina Förster (Weiler-Simmerberg) finished 13th.
In the last of three final rounds, Laffont came out on top in front of Justine Dufour-Lapointe: The Olympic champion of 2014 was only 0.09 points behind in the snowstorm at Phoenix Snow Park in Bokwang. Kazakhstan’s Julia Galysheva won the bronze medal. World champion Britteny Cox (Australia) finished fifth. Laffont had been the youngest French Olympic athlete in history four years ago in Sochi at the age of 15, and was ranked 14th at the time.
The two German participants, who had fought their way through to the Olympics on their own initiative and at their own expense, held themselves in high esteem. Lea Bouard (21/Wiesloch) failed in the second qualifying round and finished in 25th place in the final classification. Katharina Förster (29/Weiler-Simerberg) only narrowly failed by 0.90 points in the first round of the final round by entering the second round of the best twelve.
In recent years, Bouard and Förster have had to manage with virtually no external support. Their discipline has no longer been promoted by the German Ski Association since Sochi in 2014, the investment of 500,000 euros per year for a team no longer pays off, they say. Bouard and Förster hope that the association will rethink Pyeongchang. A season in the World Cup costs about 25,000 euros.
Förster, a trained child caregiver, wants to be retrained as an industrial clerk after the Olympics – because her discipline is no longer promoted, she has also lost her job with the German Armed Forces after eight years, and “80 percent” will stop her sport. Bouard wants to go on. At least as long as she can afford it.