Mitchell Gourley falls in giant slalom at Sochi paralympics

A LATE fall has dumped Aussie Paralympian Mitchell Gourley out of the men’s standing giant slalom, his final event in Sochi.

Mitchell Gourley in action in the Men's Giant Slalom. Picture: Tom Pennington/Getty Image

A LATE fall has dumped Australian Paralympic skier Mitchell Gourley out of his final event in Sochi.

Gourley went into Saturday’s men’s standing giant slalom ranked No.1 in the world and skied with a ferocity that matched his reputation.

The 22-year-old set himself up in fourth place after his first of two runs down the 1,350-metre course, just one hundredth of a second behind Russian quadruple Sochi medallist Alexey Bugaev, who sat in third.

A solid split indicated things were looking up for most of the second as well as Gourley approached the finish with a time that would have put him very close to the bronze medal once all competitors had raced.

But a solid line throughout the run was abruptly rendered futile when he caught a ski coming around the fourth-last gate to fly several metres and crash near the side of the course.

“Obviously I’m gutted,” Gourley said.

“But in saying that I think I can hold my head high.

“I put it all out there. I went down swinging.

“I had to — you look at the three guys on the podium and they’ve all won a bunch of medals this week.”

France’s Vincent Gauthier-Manuel won gold with a combined time of 2:25.87 to add to his silver and bronze in the slalom and downhill respectively.

It was a jaw-dropping performance that smashed silver medallist Bugaev by two seconds, to leave Markus Salcher of Austria a further 0.27 seconds further afield with bronze.

Toby Kane, who was fresh off the back of winning Australia’s first medal with bronze in the men’s standing super-combined on Friday, went down early in the first run and failed to finish.

“It was a tough course — snow wise it was a bit different to the last couple of days, again,” Kane said.

“I obviously had a big hiccup at the top of the hill, so then just tried to go again and slipped out down the pitch.

“Any time you don’t finish is not a great day, but I still feel smiley.”