Bright shines, wins silver

Snowboarder Torah Bright (@Torah Bright) is the toast of Australia after winning silver in the women’s snowboard half-pipe overnight at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

Bright, who earlier at the Games finished seventh in the snowboard slopestyle, powered straight through to the final after qualifying with a score of 93.00, the third highest score in the field.

After missing her first run in the final and only scoring 58.25 points to be in eighth, Bright found herself in a similar situation to Vancouver four years ago where she needed to pull out all the stops to grab a medal in run two.

With everything to do the 27 year old showed the composure of a champion to tally 91.50 and claim silver with her second run, just 0.25 points shy of gold.

Bright’s silver was the first medal for Australia at the 2014 Sochi Games, and sees her equal Dale Begg-Smith’s record of one gold and one silver from the Winter Olympic Games.

The women’s snowboard half-pipe also saw Bright’s fellow NSWIS athletes Steph Magiros(@stephmagiros) and Holly Crawford in action. Magiros, who was making her debut at the Games, qualified for the semi-final before finishing 18th overall, while Crawford finished 26th after competing with a broken wrist.

The action continues on day six at the Games with ski slopestyle athlete Russ Henshaw(@russhenshaw) making his first appearance in Sochi, while biathlete Alex Almoukov (@almoukov) lines up in the men’s individual 20km event.