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Ricker wins championship

World Championship title only honour Maëlle Ricker was missing after 17 years on the World Cup tour
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STILL NUMBER ONE

I know you're not supposed to focus on results and titles," said Maëlle Ricker, "but it was the one missing piece on my resume. I definitely had a lot of goals technically and physically for the weekend, but I also really wanted to get that title — especially to get it on Canadian soil."

The missing piece was a World Championship title, something that has eluded the most successful athlete in snowboardcross history. She won the Olympic title in 2010 and has 39 World Cup medals to her credit stretching back to 1997 — including a few medals in the sport of halfpipe when she was a dual-sport athlete. She won the overall World Cup Crystal Globe in 2010, and the snowboardcross overall title in 2008 and 2010. She won at X Games twice, and has now won the Mt. Baker Legendary Banked Slalom six times in a row.

But through it all she's never won at a World Championship. Her best result at the event before last week's win at the MAZDA FIS Snowboard World Championship at Stoneham, Quebec, was a bronze medal in Whistler back in 2005. Injuries kept her out of one event, but otherwise she always finished just short of the podium — fourth place in 2011 and 2009, fifth in 2007 and fourth way back in 1997.

She started competing at age 17 and now, at age 34, she's been on the World Cup tour for half of her life.

To get the medal this time around she had to get the best of teammate Dominique Maltais, the Crystal Globe winner from last season and the winner of the first two events this season. While they're friends off the course, and have worked together in a few races to fend off other riders, both of them were looking for the World Championship title.

"Dom qualified second and I was in top spot, so right away it set the stage for a head-to-head battle in the finals," Ricker told the Pique from Quebec on Monday, en route to the airport and the next World Cup at Blue Mountain in Ontario.

"I managed to be a little bit quicker on the top part of the course, got out of the gate in the lead and just held myself there the entire way around the course. It was really important on that course to make landings and exit the corners with as much speed as possible because there were a lot of flat traversing sections where someone could catch you. I just had to get myself in the lead before the bottom of the course, which was quite a bit slower."

Ricker and Maltais have shared numerous podiums over the last few years and starting with Ricker's return last season from injury they've claimed the lion's share of the gold medals over the past two seasons. It's no fluke, says Ricker, as the two have stepped up training, both on course and off, while constantly improving on their equipment to give themselves every advantage.

"It's really a combination of a lot of things," said Ricker. "I know we've been developing this team and this program, and Robert Joncas, the high performance director, has assembled a team that's done an amazing job and given Dom and I all the benefits on race day, from really fast boards, and all the technology that our coaches and board techs have been working on, to physical training and physiotherapy with Marilyn (Adams) to keep us together.

"We also spent a lot of time over the fall kind of fine-tuning a lot of our technical snowboard techniques when we're on course, in the air, in the turns, and I think the proof is in the pudding when you look at our race results. We're going to keep pushing at this level until next February (2014 Olympics). It's really exciting for us to have a really great support system beneath us. There's lots of help available and we're taking full advantage of it."

While Ricker will battle Maltais at every competition and in the next Olympics, Ricker says the athletes don't take things personally and the atmosphere is positive.

"The whole tour is like that actually, it's a really big family kind of atmosphere," she said. "We've all been travelling the world now for a number of years, and of course we all want to be fastest on race day, we want to win, but outside of the race we're all friends. We go out to dinners together and there's a lot of camaraderie among racers. It's lots of fun, and that's one of the main reasons I'm still doing it."

Ricker was among the first athletes to sign on for another four years after winning the Olympic title in 2010, although she suffered a knee injury the following season that resulted in her ninth and 10th surgeries. She came back strong, but by the time she was back on snow the Olympics were just over two years away.

"It's going quickly, it's amazing how quickly a four-year cycle goes by," she laughed. "But it's a year out and it's go time. The intensity is different at every start gate and everybody's pushing it. All the teams are dialing in all the little things and every result counts this year so everything has been taken to the next level. It's going to be even more heated over the next 13 months."

While a win at the World Championships gets Ricker a guaranteed spot in the Games, the pressure isn't off. "I think I'm always competing for the same reasons, but most of the pressure that's on now and for the rest of the season is from myself," she said.

"I have some high expectations how I want to improve my riding and racing strategies, and how I can keep on top of the women's division. So many younger girls are really improving a lot and I definitely have some specific goals that I haven't attained yet — maybe it's a different style of riding or just personally how I can contribute as a leader for the less experienced members of my team. There may be less external pressure, but I still have a lot of pressure that I put on myself to perform for the rest of the season."

Some of the events she's looking forward to include the trip to Sochi, Russia, to compete in the Olympic test event, and the final three World Cup events in Europe — including the World Cup finals in Spain. "That's definitely something to smile about," said Ricker, who always takes advantage of her busy travel schedule to see the world.

While it's not as exotic as Spain, she's also looking forward to racing at Blue Mountain this coming weekend. While it's a smaller mountain, the organizers went all out last season and hosted a series of events around the snowboardcross races that drew out huge crowds. This year the organizers are going even bigger, moving the event to Saturday to increase the spectators even more.

Ricker said organizers are also hosting a talent identification camp the week after the races.

"I think it's going to be a huge success for our sport to get out there in front of people and then get more kids into it," she said. "The organizers have done a great job to make it fun."