For all of its high speed and spills, Alpine skiing is, in its own way, a controlled, stately affair. After all, each skier gets a fair chance to race down the mountain, uninterrupted and unmolested.
Not so in ski cross.
Four skiers burst out of the start house at the same time and race down the course all at once. Stay in their lanes? Forget it. They go anywhere they like. There is cutting off, bumping and games of high stakes chicken, and if skiers go down, they are out of luck. There’s no do-over.
In a race with such a high degree of seeming randomness, where it is so easy to crash, the dominance of Sandra Naeslund of Sweden is simply astonishing.