Mediocre American Skier Qualifies For The Olympics
Elizabeth Swaney is a 33-year-old, Harvard-educated American. Swaney is not one of the best skiers in the world, but she is competing at the Olympics for Hungary (she has Hungarian parents) in women's freestyle pipe skiing. Here's her run, which features roughly zero tricks:
As it turns out, the event Swaney qualified for is one that seems ripe to be gamed. The Denver Post dug into how she qualified and the answer appears to be "she showed up" (or, as Deadspin put it, "something between a scam and a tale of perseverance"):
Women's pipe skiing World Cups rarely see more than 30 competitors, so it's not hard to meet the Olympic requirement for a top-30 finish. At last December's World Cup in China, when most of the world's top skiers were competing in the Grand Prix at Copper Mountain and Dew Tour at Breckenridge, Swaney finished 13 out of 15 competitors, her best career finish.
The Hungarian Ski Federation seemed as surprised as the rest of us:
[Via Tomasz Mortimer]