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ALPINE |
| Canadian Paralympic Committee Forest battles through injury to earn bronze medal WHISTLER, BC – Viviane Forest (Edmonton, AB) battled through a serious groin injury to win bronze today in the ladies visually impaired giant slalom at the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games in Whistler, BC. Forest, and guide Lindsay Debou (Whistler, BC), finished the grueling two-run GS in three minutes 11.17 seconds, coming back to a medal position despite sitting forth after a difficult opening run. Forest fell at the end of her first run, aggravating a groin problem that originally occurred during a training camp in Panorama. “It was definitely a challenge today. My second run was really difficult but I made my way down and I am just really happy. This bronze medal feels like gold for me and I’m so happy with what I did today,” said Forest who was treated Canadian team physiotherapists between runs. “This medal means a lot for me right now. Going through all that pain was very difficult to overcome. We have amazing physiotherapists and doctors, they’re are the ones who helped me get this medal,” said Forest. Slovakia’s Henrieta Farkasova won gold with Sabine Gasteiger of Austria taking the silver. This is already the second medal of the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games for Forest, after her and Debou earned silver in the slalom on Sunday. It’s the fifth medal for Canada’s Para-Alpine Ski Team so far. It was heartbreak for Christopher Williamson (Markham, ON) and his guide Nick Brush (Panorama, BC) as they finished in fourth, just 0.4s off the podium in the men’s visually impaired GS. The gold went to Jakub Krako of Slovakia with Spain’s Jon Santacana Maiztegui earning the silver and Gianmaria Dal Maistro the bronze, just ahead of the Canadian. “I’m going to try to put these two races behind me. I qualified pretty well in downhill training so I’m going to build on that and hopefully we can go from there. In order to win downhill I just need to ski faster,” said Williamson, who placed sixth in the slalom earlier in the week. He said the rainy and overcast weather conditions that have been in Whistler all week were not a factor in today’s result. “It was the same conditions for all my competitors, so I can’t put the blame on that. These are definitely not perfect conditions but it was equal for everyone so we have to take it as it is. We had a better place today then we did after the slalom so we are just going to build on it,” said Williamson. In the men’s sitting GS it was Germany’s Martin Braxenthaler taking the gold medal while American Alana Nichols won gold in the ladies sitting category. There were no Canadians in either of those races. The men’s and ladies standing categories are scheduled to compete in giant slalom tomorrow. INFORMATION: FRANÇAIS À VENIR SUR WWW.CANSKI.ORG |
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