Emily Brydon (Fernie, BC) charged to a fourth place finish in today’s final training prior to Friday’s Ladies Bombardier Lake Louise Winterstart downhill race.
Tomorrow’s opening speed event of the Ladies 2008/09 FIS Alpine World Cup season can be seen live on the CBC cable channel bold and online at www.cbcsports.ca with coverage starting at 2:25 ET (12:25 MT.)
Brydon, who finished in 1:52.01, was not completely satisfied with today’s result.
“I still need to work on a couple things, but I know where I’m going and it went better than yesterday,” said Brydon, currently the 10th ranked ladies downhiller in the world.
Sweden’s Anja Paerson had the fastest time today finishing in one minute 51.36 seconds as colder temperatures moved into Lake Louise overnight. The temperature was -17 °C at race time. Marie Marchand-Arvier of France was second 0.1s back with Lindsey Vonn of the USA third, nearly half a second back.
“It was a lot faster today, so I just tried to be in a correct position,” said Vonn. “I skied okay, you know, nothing special. But I don’t ever like to do that well in the last training run before the race because I just feel like I can’t get more on race day. You feel like you already have it, you know, I’d rather always keep working.”
Britt Janyk (Whistler, BC), who was fourth in yesterday’s training run, crossed the finish line 14th today in 1:53.02 and said she felt like the training runs had successfully prepared her for race day.
“I feel confident. Anything can happen on race day so I’m going for it tomorrow and I’m focused on what I need to do,” said Janyk, who will enter tomorrow’s race as the top ranked Canadian downhiller and third best in the world.
“To get on the podium, I think you really have to trust what you’ve been doing and your ability and take that as confidence and really beat the start gate and just let everything go and just trust you and looking ahead and attack the course 100%,” she added.
Larisa Yurkiw (Owen Sound, ON) was 36th today while Emilie Desforges (Montréal, QC) placed 45th.
Georgia Simmerling (West Vancouver, BC) grabbed 49th spot followed by Emilie Desforges (Montréal, QC) in 50th and Kelly McBroom (Canmore, AB) in 53rd. Kelly VanderBeek (Kitchener, ON) was disqualified for missing a gate.
“I’m going to the race now without a top to bottom run but that’s part of racing. I’ve had this experience once before in Altenmarkt, Austria where there was only one training run and I crashed right at the top. It was a new track, everything was new and I finished 12th, which was one of my top results ever at the time, so it happens. Luckily I know this track really well,” VanderBeek said.
