The Canadian Alpine women's team had a challenging start to the race season at the Audi FIS Ski World Cup in Lake Louise over the weekend, although there was a silver lining for Valérie Grenier. Grenier finished 26th in the super-G on Sunday (Dec.
The Canadian Alpine women's team had a challenging start to the race season at the Audi FIS Ski World Cup in Lake Louise over the weekend, although there was a silver lining for Valérie Grenier.
Grenier finished 26th in the super-G on Sunday (Dec. 3), a top-30 finish for the Mont-Tremblant, Que. native, giving her coveted world cup points. It was her best result of the weekend at Lake Louise, having come in 32nd on Friday (Dec. 1) in the first downhill world cup race and missing a gate in the second to not finish the course on Saturday (Dec. 2). Last year, Grenier was 16th in the downhill event at Lake Louise with her career best finish.
The 21-year-old was ranked 34th overall in super-G headed into the weekend of races and she had the best results for Canadians Alpine women with a time of 1:20:78.
Tina Weirather of Lichtenstein took first place in a time of 1:18:52, Lara Gut of Switzerland was second with a time of 1:18:65 and Nicole Schmidhoffer was third with a time of 1:18:79.
Gut, like Lindsey Vonn, is no stranger to winning at Lake Louise with multiple top three finishes at the resort – including three first place podiums in super-G.
Vonn did not finish the race, a disappointing result for the champion that has 77 world cup victories and two Olympic medals.
The points for Grenier were good news, but she still had mixed feelings about her results over the weekend.
“I am a bit disappointed with my skiing, there were a lot of mistakes,” she said. “It was not as good as I can ski sometimes, but I am also happy that I might be staying in the points – the top 30. I will be happy to make some points and build from there.”
Ronnie Remmie was the fastest Canadian female on Saturday, finishing 42nd with a time of 1:30:41. Unfortunately for Remmie, on Sunday she missed a gate in the super-G and did not finish. It was the same disappointing result for Stefanie Fleckenstein.
Mikaela Tommy finished 37th on Sunday with a time of 1:21:58.
Top-ranked women's downhill skier Mikaela Shiffrin was fifth in the race at 1:19:36, while German Viktoria Rebensburg, ranked second overall, was 13th with a time of 1:19:16.
