There were no tail grabs for this tiger, but French snowboarder Lucile Lefevre was yesterday a crowd-pleaser at the Big Air Shougang all the same.
The 26-year-old helped Beijing ring in the Year of the Tiger by putting on an orange-and-black big-cat costume during qualifying in the women’s big air and miming a pair of claws while about 6m off the ground.
Lefevre decided a year ago that the Beijing Olympics would be her last snowboarding competition, then hurt her knee during last week’s slopestyle event. The injury prevented her from trying any tricks coming down the 47m big air ramp, but she still wanted to participate.
Photo: AP
She borrowed tiger costume from Swiss snowboarder Nicolas Huber, giving a little flair to her otherwise straight-forward jumps.
Lefevre took the first of her three runs in her standard French jacket, amusing spectators by waving to cameras instead of performing tricks.
She broke out the tiger jumpsuit for Round 2. Lefevre scratched at the air for that jump, but after watching a replay, she realized the motion just looked funny in mittens. So on her final turn, she waved toward the judges’ tower instead.
“It was not super beautiful,” she said of her claws. “So I decided for the last one to just say hi to the judges, and especially the French one, because it’s a friend of mine.”
Asked why Huber had the costume to begin with, Lefevre said that “he’s a crazy man, actually.”
The 27-year-old Huber has been wearing it for a series of videos on his Instagram, apparently inspired by Lunar New Year celebrations that overlapped with the start of the Winter Games.
Lefevre finished dead last, but that was no bother for a two-time Olympian who never figured on being here.
She said she wanted to go out with a message.
“Right now, there is a lot of problems in the world, and if everyone is peace and easy, the world will be better for sure,” she said.
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