The World Cup season broke for Christmas Day and that’s about it this year, with athletes hitting the slopes on Boxing Day to train for a downhill on Sunday, Dec. 28 in Bormio, Italy.
Quebec’s Erik Guay was consistent once again, placing fifth in both training runs and then sixth on the day of the race. He now sits third in the overall downhill standings with 171 points, behind Michael Walchhofer (225 points) and Klaus Kroell (215 points), both of Austria.
Guay had mixed emotions about the result: “It was an alright day,” he said. “The conditions were challenging, icy on the bottom with clouds coming in and out throughout the race. I had flat light for the third race in a row so I have had some bad luck lately.”
Manuel Osborne-Paradis followed up on his medal the previous week with a 13 th place finish, while John Kucera was 29 th .
The win went to Christof Innerhofer of Italy, earning his first career World Cup win. Kroell and Walchhofer were second and third respectively.
The women’s technical team raced a giant slalom at Semmering, Austria on Sunday. Genevieve Simard placed 15 th , her best result since returning from an injury that left her on the sidelines for most of last season.
“Today feels so good,” she said. “After the months of work that I had done to get to this point I was starting to wonder, starting to doubt if it was ever going to happen and I was going to ski like I had been.”
Simard was 25 th after her first run, then followed up with the second-fastest second run to jump 10 spots. Prior to this week, Simard failed to qualify for a second run in her first three GS races of the season.
The win went to Kathrin Zettel of Austria, followed by Manuela Moelgg of Italy and Lara Gut of Switzerland.
In Monday’s night slalom, Brigitte Acton was 19 th and Anna Goodman 21 st . Maria Riesch of Germany was first, Tanja Poutiainen of Finland second and Lindsey Vonn of the U.S. third.
