Team Alberta’s ski cross women added to the province’s record medal haul with a silver and bronze on Saturday.
Kaitlyn Flynn won silver and Britt Richardson picked up the bronze in the ski cross event at Canyon Ski Resort.
“In the Big Final it was a bit chaotic out of the start,” said Flynn from Canmore. “We came around the first corner four across and on the second corner we got tangled up and two girls got taken out.”
Flynn said the cold was”not too bad” but they taped their faces in the morning to ward off frostbite.
Bronze medallist Richardson, also from Canmore, and Quebec skier Arianne Forget came out the worse on the second turn but Richardson managed to come in third.
“We all came around the corner together and we all got kind of piled up there,” she said. “No injuries, we’re all good, we all finished.”
Richardson said she wasn’t expecting a podium finish.
“We don’t train ski cross too often so I wasn’t sure how it would go.”
Gold medallist Team Quebec’s Marie-Pier Brunet came into the event with almost no ski cross experience at all.
“At the top, I was really not expecting to win,” said Brunet, who is from Bromont, Que.
“My expectation for the day was to pass my first round because in Quebec we don’t really race ski cross at all so I didn’t really know what to expect.”
Her only previous ski cross experience was a single practice.
In the men’s race, Nova Scotia’s Shane Sommer won gold, beating out Quebec’s Alexis Barabe, who had silver; B.C.’s Heming Sola, bronze and fourth-place finisher Fraser Cole, of Nova Scotia.
Sommer, who is from the Annapolis Valley, N.S., said his preparation paid off, although they rarely get more than one or two competitions in ski cross a year.
“I didn’t get too stressed about anything. I was just there to have fun.
“I figured out with my teammates what worked best with the track because it is a lot smaller and a lot slower than the digital video they showed us.”
pcowley@reddeeradvocate.com
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