{"id":13570,"date":"2026-02-10T15:55:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T22:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mickel-finishes-11th-in-first-olympic-moguls-qualifying-round\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:31:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:31:29","slug":"mickel-finishes-11th-in-first-olympic-moguls-qualifying-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mickel-finishes-11th-in-first-olympic-moguls-qualifying-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Mickel finishes 11th in first Olympic moguls qualifying round"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Durango's
Durango's Charlie Mickel competes in the men's moguls qualifying round of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Livigno, Italy, on Tuesday. (Courtesy Chris Randour\/U.S. Ski Team)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

MILAN \u2013 For Durango\u2019s Charlie Mickel, a Tuesday qualifying run that he described as \u201csolid but not quite his best,\u201d came extremely close to getting him straight into the Olympic moguls final, but now he\u2019ll have to get there the hard way after finishing 11th.<\/p>\n

With a field of 30 competitors starting the competition, the top 10 earned the right to advance to Thursday afternoon\u2019s final. The bottom 20 will have to start from scratch Thursday morning with a second qualifying run. The top 10 from that second qualifying run will then move on to the final.<\/p>\n

Mickel\u2019s score of 75.31 placed him 11th, just one spot out of the last automatic qualifying spot. His run scored him 16.28 time points, an air score of 12.73, and turns score of 46.3, to give him the 75.31 total \u2013 highlighted by a \u201ccork seven with a grab\u201d on his first jump into the air. He was only 0.46 points behind Australian Matt Graham in 10th. The top qualifier was three-time world champion Ikuma Horishima of Japan, with a score of 85.42.<\/p>\n

Mickel \u2013 the 21-year-old former Nor-Am Cup champion who is making his Olympic debut \u2013 said he could not quite find his best \u201crelaxed skiing\u201d on Tuesday\u2019s run, but there is still a long way to go in the event, so there\u2019s plenty of reason for optimism.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad that I made it down clean and I can just build from here, hopefully,\u201d he said. \u201cI pretty much just try to ski my best run every run. I think all my qualification runs will be the same that I usually do, and then my finals will be the same as well, with just a little more DD (degree of difficulty) on the bottom area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Returning to the Livigno site where he enjoyed the best result of his two years on the World Cup circuit, a third-place finish last March, Mickel said that even though he really likes the course and feels comfortable on it, the conditions were not ideal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the light is a little flat today, and it\u2019s a little sharp, but that\u2019s expected,\u201d he said. It\u2019s never perfect for us. All around, I think it\u2019s a really good course. It\u2019s fun to be back here after having such a good event last year. I just hope that I can continue to ski well on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mickel, who learned how to ski at Purgatory Resort and Chapman Hill when he was 6, said that so far the excitement of the Olympic experience has lived up to his expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely been really fun to be here, and I\u2019m super grateful to just have made it to The Games in the first place,\u201d he explained. \u201cI think it\u2019s enjoyable to have all the attention and whatnot that comes with The Games. But also, you know, it\u2019s just like it\u2019s another competition, so just going to try to be at my best and do my thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that it has been great to have \u201ctons of friends and family \u2013 a lot of special people\u201d watching back home, and wanted to give a shoutout to one viewer in particular.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sure hope Grandpa Bob\u2019s back home watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Mickel performs well enough Thursday morning (10 a.m. local time in Italy, 2 a.m. Mountain Time) to advance to the final of 20, he will get another run early in the afternoon (12:15 p.m. local time in Italy) and will need to be in the top 12 to advance further. Those athletes will then get another jump immediately after to arrive at a six-man super-final, which will follow right away, so the medals will be determined by mid-afternoon.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s moguls qualifying Round 2 will be live on USA Network. The first part of the men\u2019s moguls final will be streaming on Peacock, and if Mickel gets to the super-final, that will be live on USA Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Durangoan still has chance to make final on Thursday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[950,1315,28,346,994,1211],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango","tag-freestyle-skiing","tag-headlines","tag-sports","tag-trueanthem","tag-winter-olympics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19044,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13570\/revisions\/19044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13570"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}