Kiwi skier Alice Robinson has crashed out of the Beijing Winter Olympics midway through her Super G run at the Yanqing Alpine Ski Centre.
Sixteenth to run in a field of 44, the NZ flagbearer was only 0.21s behind Swiss leader Lara Gut-Behrami through the second checkpoint, but could not control a turn and tumbled to a stop off the course.
Slowly rising to her feet, Robinson, 20, continued to the bottom of the slope, but became the first racer unable to finish. By the end of the event, American Alix Wilkinson had joined her with a 'dnf' next to her name.
"I'll be OK, just a little bit banged up," she told Sky Sport. "I'm fine.
"I just told myself I was going to go for it today and not leave anything out there. The start went really and it was really fast at the top, but I caught my ski in the wrong place and went down pretty hard.
"It sucks."
The result came days after she finished a disappointing 22nd equal in giant slalom - the event she won a 2019 world junior championship in.
"Today, I wanted to be on the podium or in the fence... I ended up in the fence. It happens like that sometimes."
New Zealand's youngest-ever Winter Olympian four years ago at the age of 16, Robinson's preparation for Beijing was hampered by a positive COVID-19 test in January, but she bounced back within a couple of weeks, claiming second at a European Cup downhill event.
That form could not transfer to Beijing, where she and fellow skier Finn Bilous carried the NZ flag into the opening ceremony at Beijing's Olympic Stadium last Friday.
Gut-Behrami had a long wait to celebrate her gold medal, with none of the subsequent 37 skiers able to beat her 1m 13.51s.
