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Posted on 7 February 2013

1 Year to Sochi Olympics

1 Year to Sochi Olympics

One year to go before Sochi 2014 Olympics, you may be wondering if GBR will have any athletes competing in aerials? We don’t know yet but it certainly will be very hard for them to qualify. There are two levels of qualification they need to meet, with standards set by both the FIS and British Olympic Association and both are hard.

FIS Qualifications

There are just 25 places in aerials. The other four freestyle disciplines have 30 or more. Athletes have to have more than 80 FIS points which should be achievable, but at this moment in time none of the British athletes has yet managed it. Currently they have;

  • Harry 66.6
  • Lloyd 63.0
  • Tim 63.0
  • Elodie 56.16

The places are allocated by FIS using the ranking order from the Olympic Quota Allocation List which contains the World Cup standings from July 2012 until 19th January 2014 and the World Championship 2013 placing. Then they go down and offer one place to each nation in order of the list, with a maximum of four from each country, until they reach 25 competitors.

Then the nations see if that fits with their place limit of 26 per nation, 14 per gender for men and women for all 5 disciplines AND their own qualification standards. That might work in our favour as the GBR freestyle team will be smaller than 26 but the big wintersports countries like USA, Canada and Switzerland cannot put four men into all five disciplines. They can’t even put three! So some places are liberated and put back in the pot and FIS continue down the list to fill all 25 places.


 

BOA and BSS Qualifications

If you are lucky enough to have sneaked into this prestigious FIS / IOC list you then have to pass both the BOA / BSS criteria:

  • Place in the top 30 in a World Cup or the World Championships
  • Two top 50% World Cup finishes OR a top 66.7% at World Champs

So good luck to all our athletes, it certainly isn’t impossible for them to qualify, but there are some hurdles to clear first. However without any financial support from any source the British Team are clearly always going to find it terribly difficult to be competitive.

The World Cup aerial tour this year visits China, Canada, USA, Russia and Ukraine and is prohibitively expensive for British athletes to even participate and sadly their good progress and results at Europa Cup, NorAm Cup, World Juniors and International water-ramp contests do not register on the Olympic Quota list.

So come on Britain, lets find a way to support our athletes properly.