Guay hits World Cup podium again
Written by on March 10th, 2010 in Latest News.
Erik Guay celebrates after his run on the Kandahar course in Garmisch on Wednesday. (Giovanni Auletta/Associated Press)
Canadian alpine skier Erik Guay has landed on the World Cup podium for the second time in four days.
The Mont-Tremblant, Que., native finished in a tie for third with Patrick Kueng of Switzerland, crossing in a time of one minute 58.42 seconds at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. The race was the first in a series at the season-ending World Cup finals.
Guay won the super-G in Kvitfjell, Norway, on Sunday for his first World Cup victory since taking the Garmisch downhill three years ago.
It continues a strong run that started at the Vancouver Games with a pair of frustrating fifth-place finishes, fractions of a second from an Olympic medal.
It is also the seventh World Cup podium end for the Canadian alpine team this season, which was shut out of the medals in Vancouver.
Switzerland’s Carlo Janka won his third downhill of the season on Wednesday to go 54 points ahead of Benjamin Raich of Austria in the overall World Cup standings.
Janka was 0.07 seconds quicker than Guay on the Kandahar course.
“In the first half of the race it was not perfect surely, but I made no mistakes at the bottom half,” the 23-year-ancient Janka said after his seventh career World Cup victory.
Janka added that he and the other later competitors in the race benefited from improved visibility.
Mario Scheiber of Austria was 0.02 seconds behind the leader in the final downhill of the season, leaving the Austrian team without a downhill victory for the first season since 1991-92.
Canada’s Manuel Osborne-Paradis was seventh, 0.15 seconds back. The North Vancouver, B.C., native finished up fourth in the downhill standings this season, behind Swiss skiers Didier Cuche and Janka, along with Werner Heel of Italy.
Heel was sixth while Cuche finished eighth, with thumb and back injuries dogging the end of his season.
Raich opted to skip the downhill. Most of his 35 career World Cup podium finishes have come in the slalom and giant slalom, which are yet to come this week.
The men’s schedule continues with a super-G race on Thursday.
CBCSports.ca is streaming events at the men’s and women’s World Cup finals, with CBC Sports and Bold providing television coverage. Programming schedules can be found at the CBCSports.ca home page.
With files from the Associated Press
