KRASNAYA POLYANA, RUSSIA – From the finish area at the bottom of the Rosa Style course, Keri Herman looked up at the video screen to see her Olympic roommate, Devin Logan, drop into her second slopestyle ski run.
"Devin and I have been saying, 'It's gotta be one of us up [on the podium],' " Herman said. "Preferably, it would have been both, but one is better than none."
The Bloomington native already had lost her own chance for a medal Tuesday. A fluky mistake on the simplest element of her first run — and a fall on the landing of a jump in her second — forced her to settle for 10th place. But she found comfort in Logan's silver-medal performance, and solace in the fact that it could have been worse.
A slushy, pockmarked course at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park made for many unhappy landings in slopestyle skiing's Olympic debut. Defending world champion Kaya Turski of Canada wiped out on both runs in the preliminary round and did not advance to the finals. Teammate Yuki Tsubota wound up in the hospital because of a jaw injury after a hard crash in the final.
The other two Canadians, Dara Howell and Kim Lamarre, took the gold and bronze medals. Though she didn't perform at her best, Herman was overjoyed for her friends on the podium and for the attention her sport got on a global stage.
"You win some, you lose some," said Herman, whose best score of the day was a 72.40 on her second run of the preliminaries. "I feel like I still won.
"I couldn't be more proud. I learned to ski with these girls, and they're so awesome. I consider myself a winner; I'm an Olympian. This rules."
At the Olympics, Herman said, every competitor was set to pull out the best tricks in her bag. The conditions forced them to dial back their plans.