Music: {allcanada} Canadians get another 1-2 finish at freestyle WC

Friday, January 9, 2015

{allcanada} Canadians get another 1-2 finish at freestyle WC

VAL THORENS, France — Canada's Marielle Thompson won the gold medal and teammate Georgia Simmerling took silver at a women's World Cup skicross race Friday.

Thompson beat teammate Simmerling in a photo finish for Canada's second 1-2 finish in as many races. France's Alize Baron finished third.

Thompson said the Val Thorens course was perfect for her skiing style.

"This course definitely suits my skill set with a lot of jumps and opportunities to glide as well as a technically-challenging start," she said following the race. "The negative turn at the bottom is always challenging for me – especially at the end of the race day when there are lots of ruts — but I managed to do the negative turn the best in the final and keep up my speed going into the last section of the course."

Simmerling said she missed her timing a little bit in the final.,

"I stayed calm, caught the girls' draft ahead of me, made some sweet moves over a set of three jumps in a row, and flew into first," she said. "(Marielle) then got into my draft, made a slightly better move than I did over the final jump, and got me at the line."

Thomson and Simmerling will compete in another race Saturday.

In Friday's men's race, Andreas Schauer of Germany won all of his heats and posted the first win of his career to move level on points with Austria's Thomas Zangerl on top of the discipline standings.

Schauer beat local favourite and Olympic champion Jean-Frederic Chapuis of France in the men's final, with Johannes Rohrweck of Austria taking third.

Montreal's Chris Del Bosco was the top Canadian in 10th.

NHL / Ordinary World / Pamela Anderson / Amazon.com