MILAN – For Durango’s Charlie Mickel, a Tuesday qualifying run that he described as “solid but not quite his best,” came extremely close to getting him straight into the Olympic moguls final, but now he’ll have to get there the hard way after finishing 11th.
With a field of 30 competitors starting the competition, the top 10 earned the right to advance to Thursday afternoon’s final. The bottom 20 will have to start from scratch Thursday morning with a second qualifying run. The top 10 from that second qualifying run will then move on to the final.
Mickel’s score of 75.31 placed him 11th, just one spot out of the last automatic qualifying spot. His run scored him 16.28 time points, an air score of 12.73, and turns score of 46.3, to give him the 75.31 total – highlighted by a “cork seven with a grab” on his first jump into the air. He was only 0.46 points behind Australian Matt Graham in 10th. The top qualifier was three-time world champion Ikuma Horishima of Japan, with a score of 85.42.
Mickel – the 21-year-old former Nor-Am Cup champion who is making his Olympic debut – said he could not quite find his best “relaxed skiing” on Tuesday’s run, but there is still a long way to go in the event, so there’s plenty of reason for optimism.
“I'm glad that I made it down clean and I can just build from here, hopefully,” he said. “I pretty much just try to ski my best run every run. I think all my qualification runs will be the same that I usually do, and then my finals will be the same as well, with just a little more DD (degree of difficulty) on the bottom area.”
Returning to the Livigno site where he enjoyed the best result of his two years on the World Cup circuit, a third-place finish last March, Mickel said that even though he really likes the course and feels comfortable on it, the conditions were not ideal.
“I think the light is a little flat today, and it's a little sharp, but that's expected,” he said. It's never perfect for us. All around, I think it's a really good course. It's fun to be back here after having such a good event last year. I just hope that I can continue to ski well on it.”
Mickel, who learned how to ski at Purgatory Resort and Chapman Hill when he was 6, said that so far the excitement of the Olympic experience has lived up to his expectations.
“It’s definitely been really fun to be here, and I'm super grateful to just have made it to The Games in the first place,” he explained. “I think it’s enjoyable to have all the attention and whatnot that comes with The Games. But also, you know, it's just like it's another competition, so just going to try to be at my best and do my thing.”
He added that it has been great to have “tons of friends and family – a lot of special people” watching back home, and wanted to give a shoutout to one viewer in particular.
“I sure hope Grandpa Bob’s back home watching.”
If Mickel performs well enough Thursday morning (10 a.m. local time in Italy, 2 a.m. Mountain Time) to advance to the final of 20, he will get another run early in the afternoon (12:15 p.m. local time in Italy) and will need to be in the top 12 to advance further. Those athletes will then get another jump immediately after to arrive at a six-man super-final, which will follow right away, so the medals will be determined by mid-afternoon.
The men’s moguls qualifying Round 2 will be live on USA Network. The first part of the men’s moguls final will be streaming on Peacock, and if Mickel gets to the super-final, that will be live on USA Network.
