Sochi Fog Causes Olympic Snowboard Runs to Be Canceled

ROSA KHUTOR. KAZINFORM - Thick fog has forced the cancelation of Monday's seeding runs for the men's snowboardcross at the Sochi Olympics, organizers said.

Seeding runs are individual runs that decide which athletes are grouped together for the knockout races, with the aim of ensuring that the strongest boarders are not placed together in the early elimination rounds, RIA Novostin reports. The competition will instead jump straight into the 1/8 finals, which will now be seeded according to world ranking, race director Uwe Beier said in a statement. The start time for the knockout stages remains at the original 13.30 local time (09.30 GMT), but that will only be possible if the fog lifts. Visibility is currently down to around 20 meters at the venue, the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. The fog has blanketed the Sochi Olympic mountain venues since Sunday afternoon and forced the men's biathlon 15km mass start to be moved from Sunday evening to a new start time of 15.30 local time Monday. The snowboardcross course has also been the subject of safety concerns unrelated to the weather. The course, which is extremely fast with large jumps, has seen at least three athletes hospitalized, including Russian skier Maria Komissarova, who suffered a broken back in training Saturday. Czech boarder Eva Samkova won the women's snowboardcross event Sunday.