LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) \u2014 The women’s Olympic freeski halfpipe final at the Milan Cortina Games will be held on Sunday, a day later than originally scheduled because of heavy snow in the Italian Alps.<\/p>\n
The postponement of Saturday’s race is the latest winter weather hiccup to impact the program.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Eileen Gu and the rest of the field will now have to wait until 10:40 a.m. local time Sunday to vie for the last medals up for grabs in Livigno, a ski town in a mountain valley near the Swiss border that has been home to the freeski and snowboarding events.<\/p>\n
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation said the snow that accumulated on the halfpipe from constant flurries on Saturday made it impossible \u201cto ensure a safe and fair competition for all athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final had been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. local time on Saturday. Officials then pushed that back to 9:00 p.m. before saying it was off.<\/p>\n
Snowstorms this week have caused delays and events to be reshuffled twice already in Livigno.<\/p>\n
Earlier Saturday, the men’s skicross event was held amid flurries, and the freeskiers said the snow had made the course slow and extra demanding. Forty-year-old bronze medalist Alex Fiva called the skicross final \u201cmy toughest race ever\u201d because of the conditions.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s halfpipe final is the final event of the action sports events at the 2026 Games, which conclude on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The final will feature Gu, the defending champion, going for her third medal of this year’s Games and her sixth in as many career Olympic events.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Gu, who was born in the United States and competes for China, has won two silvers in Italy, finishing second in both slopestyle and big air.<\/p>\n
Four years ago, Gu became the first freestyle skier to win three medals in a single Olympics after she won gold in halfpipe and big air and silver in slopestyle at the 2022 Beijing Games.<\/p>\n
Trying to stop her from repeating as the halfpipe champion will be Amy Fraser of Canada, the only skier to beat Gu in a major contest since she won Olympic gold four years ago. Zoe Atkin, an American-born skier who competes for Britain, is also eyeing the podium after she finished first in Thursday\u2019s qualifying.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP Winter Olympics: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) \u2014 The women’s Olympic freeski halfpipe final at the Milan Cortina Games will be held…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1817,4256,50,2051,4257,4258,1821,87,4259,307,4260,1823,311,4261],"class_list":{"0":"post-16360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-alps","8":"tag-2026-milan-cortina-olympic-games","9":"tag-2026-winter-olympic-games","10":"tag-alps","11":"tag-events","12":"tag-milan-cortina-olympics","13":"tag-milan-cortina-winter-olympics","14":"tag-olympic-games","15":"tag-olympics","16":"tag-olympics-2026","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-winter-games","19":"tag-winter-olympic-games","20":"tag-winter-olympics-2026","21":"tag-xxv-olympiad"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}