West Vancouver's Georgia Simmerling crashed in the quarterfinals of the Olympic ski cross competition Friday, ending up in 14th place.
Still just 24 years old, Simmerling was making her second appearance at an Olympic Games in her second different sport. The Grouse Tyee Ski Club alumna competed in alpine skiing in 2010 but made the switch to the rough and tumble world of ski cross in 2011.
On Friday Simmerling skied well in qualifying, posting the eighth fastest time just 1.07 seconds off the lead. She then put together an excellent run to win her first elimination heat. Her relative inexperience in the sport, however, came through in her quarterfinal where she dropped into last place off the start and then, pushing to close the gap on the leaders, went down hard after losing an edge. Simmerling, who has racked up a huge injury sheet in her young skiing career that includes a broken neck, stayed down on the course for more than a minute but eventually got up and skied down under her own power. Germany's Anna Woerner, competing in the same heat, was not so lucky as she crashed just moments after Simmerling and suffered a fractured shin and torn knee ligaments.
Simmerling's pain was muted somewhat by the performance of her Canadian teammates Marielle Thompson of Whistler and Kelsey Serwa of Kelowna who won gold and silver.
"I could not be more proud of my teammates," Simmerling posted on her Twitter account following the final. "You earned it girls. GOLD and SILVER!!!!" Simmerling has already earned one World Cup medal in her two years in the sport and came into the Olympics as one of the world's top-10 ranked racers.
