Winter Paralympics: Peters hunts for 1 per cent in wind tunnel

Corey Peters has had significant work completed on his sit-ski in pursuit of a one per cent advantage. Photo: photosport.nz

Corey Peters' pursuit of a split second faces scrutiny on the slopes of PyeongChang in the coming days, with the start of the Winter Paralympic Games tonight.

The 34-year-old sit-skier will be New Zealand's flagbearer at the opening ceremony, having recently recovered from a dislocated right shoulder. He will be joined by fellow skier and Vancouver gold medallist Adam Hall and snowboarder Carl Murphy.

Peters secured silver in the giant slalom at the Sochi Games four years ago, missing gold by 0.47s to Switzerland's Christoph Kunz.

He got into the sport after a crushed spinal cord left him as a paraplegic after a September 2009 moto-cross accident.

Auckland University's wind tunnel was employed to help Peters search for better aerodynamics with the help of High Performance Sport New Zealand's Goldmine programme and Christchurch-based designers Dynamic Composites.

The result is a one per cent reduction to the drag of his sit-ski. Peters hopes that will take him a step further at these Games.

"It's super light and strong and turned a few heads this season, but the Japanese - one of my main competitors - turned up with something similar. They obviously went back to the drawing board, too.

"They designed the sit-ski itself, so they are at the forefront of equipment development and I'm just trying to keep up. It's more a psychological thing now."

"I initially flew up and spent a morning checking the drag on the old cover. They did a computer-generated profile of what they thought they needed, then built it and retested it against the old model."

The work on Peters' campaign could have been derailed if his injury had happened less than six weeks out.

"That gave it time to heal. If it had been one week out, it would've been game over.

"It gets a bit achy, but it's on the mend. It's not the perfect build-up to the Games, but that's part of sport.

"Overcoming a spinal injury was a lot more difficult. This is just a niggle really. Now I've got to trust in my ability and throw it down the mountain."

Having busted his left shoulder in 2013, Peters said he had "evened it up".

"I clipped my arm on a gate in America and landed straight on it, popping out the joint. It was at about 80km/h, so not super-high speed, at least compared to the 110km/h of the downhill.

"It's hard to scratch my back now, I need one of those hand-held claws," he quipped.

"I got a bit lucky because while the labrum and humerus were damaged, the rotator cuff muscles holding the joint were stretched but intact, so it didn't require surgery."

Peters has reasons to be confident of success. He won the downhill and super G at the 2015 world championships and took silver in the giant slalom, followed by silvers in downhill and super G last year.

He also delivered a silver in the super G at the PyeongChang test event before crashing out of the downhill three gates from the finish while in the lead.

As a precaution he has dropped the slalom and super combi events from his programme.

"They're not high speed, but you need to be reactive and throwing your body around," Peters said.