Jennifer Heil of Spruce Grove, Alta., and Alexandre Bilodeau of Rosemère, Que., capped a brilliant performance for the Canadian freestyle ski team this week with victories in Saturday’s mogul events at the Canada Post Freestyle Grand Prix World Cup competition at Cypress Mountain.
It was a phenomenally successful weekend for Canada’s freestyle team in front of a Canadian crowd at the 2010 Olympic venue. Canada ended the three-day competition with a remarkable five gold medals, two silver and a bronze.
In women’s moguls, Heil, who now lives in Montreal, took the gold with 24.79 points for her second victory and fourth medal in five World Cup races this season. Hannah Kearney of the U.S. was second with 24.18 and Margarita Marbler of Austria was third at 23.84.
“For sure this was my best performance this season,” said Heil, the reigning Olympic champion. “The course, the weather and the crowd made it all perfect. The highlight for me was the quality of my skiing. I was more aggressive and I felt my technique becoming more automatic. I could feel the smoothness and the ease in my skiing.”
Steve Omischl of Kelowna, B.C., won the gold medal Friday in the men’s aerials final at the Canada Post Freestyle Grand Prix World Cup competition on the 2010 Olympic site at Cypress Mountain.
Omischl and Anton Kushnir of Belarus both earned 250.96 points in the final but Omischl was awarded the gold after the tie-breaking procedure that looked at raw scores before the degree of difficulty was included. It was the Canadian’s second victory this season. Stanislav Kravchuk of Ukraine took the bronze with 250.64.
“I’m totally exhausted,” said Omischl, the two-time defending FIS World Cup aerials champion and current points leader on the tour. “It was special to win here for sure but I approached this competition like any other World Cup. We’re here to do a job and execute a plan that we rehearsed over and over. But this was an important venue and I’m quite proud to have achieved my goal.”
Omischl leads the World Cup standings after five events with 337 points followed by Jeret Peterson of the U.S., with 242 and his compatriot Ryan St. Onge with 213. Kyle Nissen of Calgary, who didn’t qualify for tonight’s final, remains fourth overall.
