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Tough day for Whistler skiers in Olympic downhill

Swiss Defago claims gold; Erik Guay gets past shaky start to place fifth

 

Swiss veteran Didier Defago claimed a well-earned gold medal in the men's Olympic downhill Monday,

On a hard, bumpy course far different from the surface the men had their one official training run on last week, Defago took top spot in a tight three-man race for the medals. He crossed the finish line in 1:54.31. Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal was second in a time of 1:54.38. American Bode Miller was third in 1:54.40. The top skiers were separated by less than one tenth of a second.

The Canadians literally put it on the line. Manuel Osborne-Paradis had a few near crashes before losing his momentum at Coaches' Corner, a sharp right-hand turn about two-thirds of the way down the Dave Murray course.

"It's an outdoor sport and there's bumps and conditions change and some stuff was unavoidable," he said. "I hit bumps in certain spots, and I've been saying all week that the most critical turn would be Coaches' and that was the one where I pooched it...

"That's what happens, one (bad) turn and you lose the whole race."

Robbie Dixon knows all about that. He had a tough run, hitting a gate panel at one point, then finally going off course and crashing. This was his first race since early January when he sustained a concussion after slipping on snow, and he admitted to being a little rusty. The fact that his crash happened on the Dave Murray Downhill, named after one the Crazy Canucks, was not lost on Dixon.

"I was definitely putting some crazy in there," he said. "It didn't work out for the best, but it definitely got a little crazy."

Dixon managed to ski down after his crash, but was slow to get up.

"It's just everything coming into reality after coming to a sudden stop. Just realizing that it's not the finish line, that I'm laying on my side, that my thumb hurts and that's not right. I was okay, but it was just everything, my heart was, just kind of..." he trailed off.

"Everyone wants to finish and finish strong, but I'm happy I put it on the line. I definitely thought I had a pretty good plan, and I was definitely feeling the pressure but I tried to use it in a positive way. Standing at the start and looking around I thought, 'this is my hometown, this is where I grew up and I'm so privileged to be standing at the start representing Canada. It didn't go as well as planned, but it's racing - you have to go for it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

"Now I'm just looking forward to Friday and the super G. Hey, nothing but up from here!"

Erik Guay, who has struggled to reach the podium the past two seasons while dealing with a back injury, was the top Canadian. He compensated for a rough start by posting some of the fastest splits on the lower part of the course to make up half a second against Miller, who was leading at the time. Guay fell short, but moved temporarily into second place. Other skiers bumped him back to fifth, which is his best finish in downhill this year.

"I love racing here," he said. "The course was really different from training, but I think the course workers did an amazing job, they had tough conditions and they worked through the night. It's too bad we didn't get one run on there to feel out the snow a little bit - I think that's one of the reasons it took me a while from the start to get going. It was night and day from the training runs. But it is really a world class course, and I think it would be one of the harder courses on the World Cup."

Guay also noted that the Canadian team had lost a few skiers to injury, including world downhill champion John Kucera and Francois Bourque.

"I'm not making any excuses today, I thought we all could have been on the podium, and as we've seen from Manny all year the guys are skiing well, but we're not up to full power. We could have been on the podium today for sure."

Osborne-Paradis personally found some of the top European courses to be harder, but would like to see a regular World Cup at Whistler displace some of the easier courses on the circuit.

"It's a great course, no question," he said. "We had a few crashes, a few guys went off course and hit flags, and that's kind of what you want to see. You want it to be hard and for the top guys to come out on top. Today the best guy was Didier."

It was nearly Osborne-Paradis. At the first interval Osborne-Paradis was just 0.12 seconds back of Defago and by the second he was even. He dropped back 0.37 seconds by the third interval and then lost speed at Coaches' Corner that robbed him of momentum for the last third of the course. He finished 1.13 seconds back of Defago.

Defago was the only skier to better Miller's splits on the top of the course, but like Guay he continued to build on his lead on the lower part of the course.

Fourth place went to Mario Scheiber of Austria in 1:54.52, with Guay finishing fifth in 1:54.64. Osborne-Paradis was 17 th and Jan Hudec, on the comeback trail after missing last year with an injury, was 25 th .

After the weather and difficulties of the last week most athletes were relieved that the alpine events were finally underway.

More than 200 volunteers worked around the clock to overcome the mix of rain, snow and warmer temperatures that plagued the track for the last week. The race jury and course workers patiently worked to preserve the track and waited for cooler temperatures. They finally came Sunday evening and the course surface was hard and bumpy Monday morning.

Ironically, most of the skiers in the media scrum said they would have preferred to race on the softer snow of the previous days, even if it meant dealing with low lying clouds and ruts.