The course for the inaugural Olympic slopestyle competition has been called everything from “sketchy” to “dangerous,” with concerns about its safety causing U.S. snowboarder Shaun White to pull out of the event.
Qualifying for snowboard slopestyle began Thursday, and Norwegian snowboarder Kjersti Buaas was one of the first to experience the danger of the course firsthand. Buaas mistimed her landing off one of the run’s abnormally high kickers, causing her to land face-first on the hard-packed snow below.
It was a nasty-looking fall, but Buaas said later in an Instagram post that she suffered only minor injuries.
“Oh snap…That was a real scare!!!” she wrote. “Good news is that I only ruptured a muscle… I am so grateful it’s nothing worse, even though I have some severe pain in my stomach and back.”
This might be the first time “ruptured muscle” and “good news” have ever been mentioned in the same sentence.
See what Buass looked like post-race in the photo below, with a hat tip to Business Insider.
GIF via Reddit
