Every day NBC 7 will provide a quick look at the key events of the day as well as the local athletes who will be competing. Here’s our “San Diego Athletes to Watch” for Thursday, Feb. 6:
Olympic competition began at Rosa Khutor in the Mountain Cluster with snowboard riders taking on the new slopestyle course in the men’s and women’s events.
Because of the time difference, qualifications in the men’s category actually began at 10 p.m. PT on Wednesday with the women’s qualifications beginning at 2 a.m. PT Thursday.
Chula Vista Olympic Training Center helped Chas Guldemond prepare for his slopestyle ride. Another local athlete, 16-year-old Seamus O’Connor of Ramona, rode in the same event for Ireland.
Neither secured a spot for the finals on Thursday. They'll get a second chance in the semi-finals on Saturday. Get results here
Carlsbad athlete and Olympic gold medalist Shaun White announced Wednesday that he would not be competing in slopestyle to focus on his halfpipe competition.
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At the same venue, in the Alpine Center, the U.S. Ski Team began training for their events in women’s super-combined and men’s downhill.
We’ll see Olympic gold medalist Bode Miller, who once called San Diego home, got some training time on the course that Alpine skiing's master architect, Bernhard Russi, has been creating and adapting since 2006.
The 36-year-old athlete will enter four Olympic events in Sochi including the super-combined, the event in which he earned the gold medal in Vancouver.
By the looks of his first training run, Miller may be in medal contention.
"Unfortunately they don't give you medals for training runs," Miller said. "If they did, I would be psyched today.
Read: Bode Miller Leads Opening Downhill Training
At 6 a.m. PT, the women will begin qualifying rounds in freestyle skiing, moguls. Things have been dicey to say the least for the athletes as more than one tumbled when they first tested the just-completed course.
The competition day in Sochi will end in the Iceberg Skating Palace with the Men’s Team Figure Skating Short Program and Pairs Short Program.
History will be made when figure skating begins its first-ever team event.
You can catch the livestreams of those events at 7:30 a.m. PT and 9:10 a.m. PT respectively.
