Miller crashes out in giant slalom

MANILA, Philippines — Fil-Am alpine skier Asa Miller cracked in the face of the harsh course weather conditions and crashed out of the men’s giant slalom event of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics at the Ice River atop Xiaohaituo Mountain yesterday.

Coming out of the start line as the 63rd of 89 entries, the 21-year-old Miller fumbled and fell just under 20 seconds into his first run and sputtered out of the race where he had hopes on finishing in the top 45 and improve on his 70th-place finish in Pyeongchang in 2018.

Instead, the Oregon native would have to lick his wounds and just focus on redeeming himself with a better effort in the men’s slalom event on Wednesday.

Miller, just like 33 other competitors who had a DNF (did not finish), succumbed to the difficult conditions posed by the hard, falling snow, not the artificial type that organizers sprayed on the course days ago, the tough track and close to zero visibility in the area.

These challenges left the event with only 56 of the 89 skiers in the start list.

“It’s certainly a bummer as the course got skied out,” said Will Gregorak, Miller’s coach. “It’s not good on the upper pitch. I feel bum for him but he had an excellent warm up this morning.”

Miller was so frustrated.

“Asa didn’t want to ski just to finish. He wanted to ski lay down and run,” said Gregorak.