The Beijing Winter Olympic bronze medalist injured her knee in late 2024 and required surgery, so is only back in competition this time. Her 79.00 points were sufficient to make it through qualifying in Aspen, with the top 10 out of 22 competitors progressing. Sildaru was tenth.

"I planned to do a more difficult run today than [at the previous event] in China – I practiced it in training as well and everything worked out. But the weather conditions were very challenging, so things didn't play out and I had to repeat the same routine as at the last World Cup," she said.

"I definitely didn't show my best skiing today, but that was largely due to the competition conditions – it was snowing and throughout the entire run I had to focus on maintaining speed."

"Still, I'm happy that in these conditions I managed to squeeze out as much as possible and improve my score in the second run. Sunny weather is forecast for Saturday's final, so hopefully I can perform the planned run there," Sildaru went on.

Aspen is particularly significant for the Estonian as it is the venue where she first burst on to the scene a decade ago, becoming at the age of 13 the youngest X Games gold medalist when the event was held there in January 2016.

One other women's Estonian freestyle skier competing in the event, Grete-Mia Meentalo, put in a best of 67.00 points, finishing 16th, not quite enough to qualify.

Henry Sildaru through to two finals

Kelly's younger brother Henry, 19, meanwhile made the finals of both the slopestyle and halfpipe events.

He had already made it through to the slopestyle final earlier in the week, and his 84.50 on his second halfpipe run earned him fourth place in the second qualification group granted him passage to the final in that event too.

The slopestyle final is scheduled for today, Friday, the halfpipe final on Saturday.

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