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Marie-Michèle Gagnon was the lone Canadian alpine skier to face on a World Cup podium final winter.
The 32-year-old’s transition from slalom and large slalom to downhill was interrupted by a misplaced season attributable to harm, however she’s now among the many world’s elite in pace disciplines.
“There’s a number of good issues taking place proper now,” Gagnon advised The Canadian Press. “I am in a significantly better place than ever proper now in that journey.
She leads a small Canadian contingent into the ladies’s World Cup downhill season beginning Friday in Lake Louise, Alta. A second downhill Saturday and Sunday’s super-G follows, if the climate co-operates.
The boys’s World Cup in Lake Louise was whittled down from a three-race weekend to 1. Certainly one of two downhills and Sunday’s super-G have been cancelled due to an excessive amount of snow.
The resort in Banff Nationwide Park had collected about half a metre of moist snow as of Monday. Rain moved on this week.
Gagnon was seventh in Tuesday’s first coaching run, however runs Wednesday and Thursday have been referred to as off.
The forecast for ladies’s race weekend in Alberta is extra promising, with much less precipitation and temperatures beneath freezing.
Each the boys’s and ladies’s World Cups in Lake Louise have been cancelled final 12 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Racing in Canada once more after a 12 months’s hiatus is significant for Gagnon, of Lac-Etchemin, Que.
“It is great,” she mentioned. “It is very nice to have a house race. It is good for the way forward for racers in Canada to even have that hill be prepared [because] Nor Am goes after the World Cup.
Transition to hurry occasions, previous accidents
As soon as a tech-race specialist with a pair of profession World Cup victories in alpine mixed, Gagnon started transitioning into pace occasions 5 years in the past.
The 2-time Olympian suffered season-ending knee and shoulder accidents crashing in a Lake Louise coaching run in 2017. She wasn’t capable of compete within the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
She posted three top-10 ends in downhill final winter and earned her first World Cup medal in a pace occasion. She took bronze in super-G in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
“It was actually the perfect feeling to have a very good season final 12 months,” Gagnon mentioned.
“I used to be form of on the level the place the workforce did not have a lot cash and so they nearly could not have a ladies’s pace workforce. It was nearly like the top of it for me. Final 12 months, to beat that, and to be the one one on all the workforce to have a podium was actually particular for me.”
“This podium was my most enjoyable podium I’ve ever had in my profession.”
Gagnon positioned sixth in super-G and thirteenth in downhill in February’s world championship in Cortina, Italy. Her greatest end in Lake Louise up to now was tenth in super-G in 2013.
She’s engaged to U.S. males’s downhill workforce racer Travis Ganong.
Fellow Canadians in competitors, star-studded worldwide group
Gagnon’s downhill teammate Roni Remme of Collingwood, Ont., positioned fifth in alpine mixed, which is the entire time of a slalom run and super-G, in Cortina’s world championship.
Toronto’s Candace Crawford and Stefanie Fleckenstein of Whistler, B.C., who weren’t named to the ladies’s workforce by Alpine Canada this season, are racing in Lake Louise as independents.
Emily Brydon was the final Canadian girl to face on the Lake Louise podium, ending second and third in 2009 downhills.
Shiffrin excels in slalom, large slalom and alpine mixed, however has received each a downhill and a super-G in Lake Louise throughout her profession.
Lake Louise presents equal prize cash for the boys’s and ladies’s World Cups at 120,000 Swiss francs per occasion (C$167,000). The winner takes a C$62,000 slice.
Lake Louise hosted its first World Cup in 1980 when Steve Podborski, Ken Learn and Dave Irwin — generally known as the Loopy Canucks — raced a males’s downhill.
The ski resort west of Calgary has been the positioning of 78 ladies’s and 46 males’s World Cups races since then.
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