2018 Winter Olympics: Rhys Thornbury finishes 14th in skeleton after final mistake

Rhys Thornbury. Photo / Getty

A horror final run has cost Kiwi skeleton racer Rhys Thornbury a top 10 finish at the Winter Olympics.

Thornbury came into the fourth and final run in seventh spot, but a mistake at the start saw him finish with the worst time in the deciding run.

The 28-year-old lost control of his sled as he started his run, with the blades coming out of the starting grooves. While he eventually corralled it, he had lost all of his critical momentum, significantly slowing his eventual run down the course.

He finished with a time of 52.14 seconds, by far his worst of his four runs, and 0.5 seconds worse than the next-slowest time.

As a result, he dropped from seventh overall to 14th overall - 4.17 seconds behind South Korean gold medalist Sungbin Yun - and cut a dejected figure after the conclusion of his race.

"It started as the dream day for me, and then it turned into a bit of a nightmare," Thornbury said.

"It's the worst nightmare come true really – pushing it maybe too hard, too much pressure in the sled, it came out of the groove. From there, it's pretty much all over."

A clean run would have seen Thornbury finish either seventh or eighth, and he described his devastation on the finish line.

"There wasn't that much pressure, it was just a mistake, and it cost me everything really. You're kind of just waiting to wake up and be on the start line again – I was just distraught."

Still, Thornbury can take solace in his earlier three strong runs for his future in the sport.

"I'm proud of the runs that I had that were good. It's definitely going to make me stronger going into the future."

Yun cruised to gold on his home course, winning by 1.63 seconds over Russia's Nikita Tregubov, to claim the biggest victory margin in the history of Olympic skeleton.

Tregubov beat out Great Britain's Dominic Parsons for silver by a remarkable 0.02 seconds. In a supremely tight battle, Parsons just edged Latvia's Martins Dukurs for bronze, by 0.11 seconds.

Elsewhere, 16-year-old Kiwi skier Alice Robinson has missed out on the final in the women's slalom event, after failing to finish in her first run, while compatriots Willis Feasey (37th) and Adam Barwood (43rd) were both well off the pace in the men's Super G final.