"I could have handled some parts of this race a bit better," observed Zhang Yangming after completing the men's super-G (giant slalom) event at the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday. The Chinese alpine skier is typically driven and demands excellence from himself at all times, but he might just be too hard on himself.

Indeed, Zhang finished a distant 33rd in a time of 1:29.39, falling far behind Austria's Matthias Mayer, whose winning time of 1:19.94 made him the first men's alpine skier to win gold medals in three consecutive Games. But the 27-year-old from northeast China's Jilin Province still etched his name into the history book as he became the first Chinese male skier to finish the super-G race at the Olympics.

Zhang was under massive pressure to deliver after being disqualified from the men's downhill event on Monday, but he has rediscovered his composure and raced down the "Rock" course at the National Alpine Ski Center in Yanqing without a hitch.

"Yesterday's performance didn't have much of an effect on my mindset, I was in very good shape today," he said. "It is not uncommon for athletes to be disqualified from a race, whether it is a slalom or a giant slalom, and this is often the case even for the very best."

Zhang's view was backed up by Mikaela Shiffrin's nightmare start to the Beijing Olympics. The two-time Olympic champion, who was expected to contend for multiple golds in China, was disqualified from her second race this week after missing a gate early in the first run of Wednesday morning's women's slalom.

"I feel pretty awful," said Shiffrin in the mixed zone. "But it won't feel awful forever. I just feel pretty low right now... I was pushing out of the start. I had full intentions of skiing as hard as I could. I slipped up a little bit on one turn and I just didn't give myself room to make any kind of error like that."

While Zhang has taken China's first steps toward a new super-G era, he stays humble and thinks that self-criticism is what keeps him sharp.

"I didn't quite live up to my expectations because I wasn't able to fully replicate my training form in the race. On a scale of 1 to 100, I would give myself 40 points, which is not quite good enough," he opined.

Though playing a minor role in alpine skiing, Zhang keeps an eye on the bigger picture and is sanguine about China's long-term prospects at the Olympics.

"China has a late start to winter sports and there is still a lot of room for improvement," he mused. "However, I'm convinced that as the number of Chinese athletes participating in skiing gets bigger and bigger, the training competition and results will definitely get better and better."