Omischl heading to Olympic finals

North Bay's Steve Omischl began his third and final attempt at Olympic glory on Monday night.

The 2009 World Cup Freestyle Ski champion landed a pair of solid jumps in qualifying to move through to the finals which take place on Thursday at Cypress Mountain.

Omischl finished with 9th overall out of the 24 skiers on his first jump - a jump which he felt was a safe jump which lacked speed in his aerial rotation.

He followed up with a solid second jump to move his combined score to 233.88 which allowed him to finish 8th overall. Canadian teammate Warren Shouldice finished 6th and Calgary's Kyle Nissen finished 9th allowing all three to move on to the 12-man final.

China's Jia Zongyang finished with a top score of 242.52.

Omischl, who talked with CTV after his second jump admitted that the qualification round is very stressful.

"You really just have to land 2 jumps," he told TSN's Katherine Dolan while still catching his breath after the second jump.

"We were a little bit slow on the first jump and that cost us for sure on the first jump but we definitely took a step up on that last one and pretty much maxed out what we could have done.

"I played it safe just to get into the finals and hopefully 233 holds up. I don’t really know what the other guys have been doing I’ve been in my own little world tonight, I really was in my own kind of world and I focused on what I had to do and I’m pretty proud of that second jump."

Champions out?

In a surprise, World Cup leader Anton Kushnir from Belarus failed to land his second jump and finished 15th and will not qualify for the final. Kushnir has won 4 of the 6 World Cup events this season. Meantime, defending Olympic champion Han Xaiopeng struggled to a 21st place finish.