Melissa Perrine’s persistence lands another podium finish

• Video: Melissa Perrine - Believe

Two Paralympic bronze in two days - Melissa Perrine is becoming a medal factory for the Australian Paralympic Team at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games.

Perrine's two medals, combined with Para-snowboarder Simon Patmore's gold brings the Australian medal tally to three.

The 30-year-old from Mittagong in the NSW Southern Highlands, along with sighted guide and coach Christian Geiger, landed the giant slalom bronze in two solid runs at the Jeongseon Alpine Centre late yesterday to add to the super combined bronze 24-hours earlier.

After two Paralympic Games, Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014, when the well was dry, the floodgates have opened for Perrine in South Korea.

And it could have so easily been silver as she finished 0.47 seconds behind Menna Fitzpatrick (Great Britain). Henrietta Farkasova (Slovakia) took the gold - her fourth for the women's vision-impaired class here at the 2018 Games.

"I care about the skiing a lot more than I care about the medals," Perrine said, on how close she came to upgrading to silver. "I'm so stoked the skiing was able to get me a medal, so I'm really happy with the skiing today."

Winning her maiden Paralympic medal, just a day earlier, in her third campaign definitely released the pressure.

Sighted guide Christian Geiger and para-alpine skier Melissa Perrine with their PeyongChang Winter Paralympic super combined bronze medals. Photo: Australian Paralympic Committee

"I love this sport, it's an amazing sport. I wanted to relax and have a lot of fun out there today and I managed to do that," said the woman who has won 35 World Cup medals and eight World Championships medals over the past eight years. Now she has two Paralympic medals to add to the collection.

"It was definitely a sense of relief. I had relatively decent World Cup form going into Sochi and had a lot of bad luck," she said.

All eight Australian Para-alpine skiers competed in Giant Slalom yesterday, and all eight made it down both runs, which was no mean feat in the soft Spring-like snow in the morning, transitioning into more icy conditions in the mid-afternoon.

From the eight, there were three top-10, four top-20 and one top-25 finishes.

Perrine and Australian team co-captain Mitch Gourley (8th) were joined by sit-skier Tori Pendergast (8th) in the top-10.

"Halfway through, one of my outriggers (cut-down ski poles) went in a random direction, so it was a really big fight to try and grab it. Once I did, I just tried to 'go' and make up the time. After an average run this morning, I'm happy with that to end the day," Pendergast said.

Men's sit-skiers Sam Tait (17th) and Mark Soyer (18th) enjoyed top-20 placings with vision impaired Patrick Jensen (11th) and Shaun Pianta (14th).

"I started off today with a first run which was kind of passive," Tait said of the tricky snow conditions.

"I think I was skiing just to finish. And then second run I thought 'Stuff this" I need to attack it more.

"It's just felt tighter, faster, better and I managed to jump five spots (in placings)."

Courtesy APC