ROSA KHUTOR — Thick fog has forced the cancelation of Monday's seeding runs for the men's snowboard cross 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.
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 1:30 p.m., but that will only be possible if the fog lifts. Visibility is currently down to about 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 15 kilometer mass start to be moved from Sunday evening to a new start time of 3:30 p.m. Monday.
The snowboard cross 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 snowboard cross event Sunday.
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