Calgary, Alta. (February 25, 2017) – The second downhill in Kvitfjell (NOR) was held today under another day of perfect downhill conditions. Today’s race was another near miss podium miss for the Canadian Cowboys. Vancouver’s Manuel Osborne-Paradis finished in fourth-place, just 0.26 seconds back from the lead-time. Osborne-Paradis is no stranger to fourth-place finishes on this track, including a fourth-place result last season. 

“I’m missing that little extra urge to keep making speed which translates into a tenth here and tenth there,” said Osborne-Paradis. “It’s really nice to be consistently comfortable with a high quality style of skiing. I like super-G and I’m hoping tomorrow will be a fast set. I’m expecting high speed and blind gates. It’s always a really hard super-G here and it will take a lot of risk to be successful.”

Mont Tremblant’s Erik Guay finished today’s race in sixth-place, 0.32 seconds back from the lead-time after a fourth-place finish yesterday. 

“Manny and I are kind of feeding off each other. right now, which is good,” said Guay. “You have to give respect to those top guys are are skiing extremely well. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t do better today but I think the skiing was there. I’m focused on tomorrow’s super-G now and I know if i ski to my potential, I can do something good here.”

Norway’s hometown hero, Kjetill Jansrud finish in first-place today, leading by 0.08 seconds. Italy’s Peter Fill finished in second-place and Switzerland’s Beat Fuez rounded out the podium, trailing the lead-time by 0.14 seconds. 

Today’s race marked the final downhill of the season before the World Cup Finals, held in Aspen, Colorado. Tomorrow the men’s speed team will have their last shot at a podium with a super-G race before World Cup Finals are contested.

On the ladies’ side, they raced a super-G in Crans Montana (SUI). Yesterday’s poor conditions were replaced with sunny skies and a hard track that greeted the ladies’ teams today.

It was a good day for Canada with three athletes inside the top 30. Quebec’s Marie-Michèle Gagnon skied to a 12th-place finish, a season-best result.  This is Gagnon’s second-best career super-G finish, after a sixth-place super-G finish from 2013. Mont Tremblant’s young Valérie Grenier also had a great day finishing the super-G in 21st-place and Toronto’s Candace Crawford finished in 24th-place.

Tomorrow the ladies’ get their second shot this weekend at an alpine combined podium.

Canadian men’s results

4 – Manuel Osborne-Paradis

6 – Erik Guay

50 - Tyler Werry

52– Jeffrey Frisch

Canadian’s ladies’ results

12 – Marie-Michèle Gagnon

21 – Valérie Grenier

24 – Candace Crawford

DNF – Mikaela Tommy

ABOUT ALPINE CANADA

Alpine Canada is the national governing body for alpine, para-alpine and ski cross racing in Canada. With the support of valued corporate partners along with the Government of Canada, Own the Podium and the Canadian Olympic Committee, Alpine Canada develops Olympic, Paralympic, world championship and World Cup medallists to stimulate visibility, inspiration and growth in the ski community.