Durangoan moved to final later on Thursday
Durango’s Charlie Mickel looks on as he competes in men’s moguls at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Livigno, Italy, on Thursday. (Courtesy Chris Randour/U.S. Ski Team)
MILAN – After a controlled and confident second qualifying run on Thursday morning, Charlie Mickel comfortably advanced to the moguls “F1” final coming up in the afternoon.
The Durango native had a score of 77.82, improving on the 75.31 he had in Tuesday’s first qualifying (Q1) run. He enters the final, which will have the competition’s top 20 performers, in 13th place. The top 10 from Tuesday from the field of 30 got a bye straight into the final. Mickel finished 11th, so he had to do his second (Q2) qualifying run.
Ten of the 20 skiers went before he had his chance, and there was a clear pattern Mickel, the son of Alex and Molly, noticed in Q2 versus Q1.
“I saw some pretty big scores go up before I dropped, so I knew if I wanted to stay high in the Q2, I had to see a better run,” said the 21-year-old, shortly after his run, which ended with a shake and twirl of his ski pole to show how pleased he was. “I was glad to improve on it. Just the feelings I had in that (first) run, in watching it back, and then have some easy things to improve on.”
His second run had improvement in time points (17.34 versus 16.21) and air points (14.98 versus 12.73), but a drop in his turn points (46.3 versus 45.5).
“I’ll be able to up the DD (degree of difficulty) a little bit in the final,” said Mickel, who entered the Olympics ranked fourth in moguls on the World Cup circuit. “So, I’m excited for sure. There’s definitely some pressure, but you know that’s part of the game. I’m going to try to ski the very best run I possibly can.”
The conditions, he added, should help him in the afternoon.
“Now that we’ll be in the final, the course should be a little bit better. We’re getting sun on it. It’s going to smooth out. There’s going to be less people skiing on it. There’s going to be less slaps that people have done on it … I’ll do a little higher degree of difficulty jump, so I’ll do a core 10 on the bottom air. I’m optimistic. It’s no expectations, but a lot of determination and just really grateful to be here and hope that I can improve.”
Only two of the 20 skiers in the morning had better runs than Mickel – Copper Woods of Australia (80.46) and Japan’s Shimakawa Takuya (74.82).
The F1 final begins at 12:15 p.m. local time in Italy. The top eight will then get another “super final” (F2) jump immediately after to determine the medals.
