Olympic organizers announced men’s downhill skiing will be postponed from Saturday night to Sunday night, following three one-hour delays.
Originally scheduled for 10 p.m. EST on Saturday night, the Olympic jury and organizers originally agreed to postpone the start of competition and reconvene at 10 p.m. EST to determine the feasibility of an 11 p.m. EST start time.
They met two more times, an hour apart, but concluded that the conditions had not improved enough and agreed to postpone the start of competition. The third and final meeting resulted in postponing the competition to an entirely other day.
Within two hours of that final postponement, organizers announced that the competition would commence Sunday at 11 p.m. ET, 25 hours after the initial start time.
American Bryce Bennett is slated as the opening racer once competition begins. This is Bennett’s second Olympic appearance.
This decision comes on the heels of a cancellation of Friday’s training run in this same event. Three athletes were able to complete a run before organizers closed the feature due to unsafe conditions. In the weeks leading up to the Games, there was considerable attention paid to the impact of climate change on safety and fairness at the Winter Olympics.
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