‘It’s a kick back down to reality’: Paralympic skier Millie Knight misses out on second medal
The 23-year-old finished fourth in the women’s super-G visually impaired event having won bronze in the downhill on day one
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Your support makes all the difference.Millie Knight was left with more questions than answers after missing out on a medal by the skin of her teeth at the Winter Paralympics.
The visually-impaired alpine skiing star bagged a downhill bronze on day one at Beijing 2022 but was unable to emulate those exploits in her favoured super-G event on Sunday.
Knight, 23, finished just 0.09s behind third-place local hero Zhu Daqing as fellow Brit Menna Fitzpatrick claimed silver to become the nation’s most decorated Winter Paralympian of all time.
Knight secured silver in the super-G event at PyeongChang 2018 and admits her unexpected failure to fire at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Centre is a setback.
The four-time Paralympic medallist, who is guided by Brett Wild, said: “I’ve not got many words right now.
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“It’s very hard – I don’t know what went wrong and I think that’s probably what is toughest – I don’t know or recall making any major mistakes.
“It’s certainly a kick back down to reality, for sure. Brett took a good line over everything but I guess today just wasn’t meant to be.
“It’s not like we went into these Games expecting to win five gold medals, so at least we don’t have that disappointment. I think I’d have rather come fifth than fourth!
“We’re certainly used to bouncing back from kickbacks, that’s for sure. Hopefully we follow that trend tomorrow.”
Knight suffered four concussions in the build-up to Beijing including one particularly severe incident in Austria last year.
She considered the prospect of hanging up her skis for good before a pair of medals at January’s World Championships in Lillehammer helped secure her spot at a third Paralympic Games.
Those podium places came in the super-G – Knight won bronze on her 23rd birthday – and super combined (gold) events and she’ll now bid to continue that momentum in the latter on Monday.
Knight and Wild, 29, still have the super combined, slalom and giant slalom disciplines to target and guide Wild reckons a period of post-race analysis can prove the perfect Paralympic remedy.
He said: “We’ll sit down tonight and do video analysis with our coaches.
“We’ll watch and see where we can try and make adjustments before tomorrow.
“But for now, I don’t know where we went wrong. Personally, I thought we had a better run today than yesterday.”
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