FREESTYLE:

Justine Dufour-Lapointe 3rd in Meribel moguls

Dec. 15, 2010  — CFSA     ♦ Photo: Justine Dufour-Lapointe (Mike Ridewood, CFSA)

MERIBEL, France — In only her second FIS World Cup start, 16-year-old Justine Dufour-Lapointe gave herself an early Christmas gift with a bronze-medal finish in Wednesday’s dual moguls competition.

“I’m really stoked, I actually can’t quite believe it right now because it came so fast,” said the Montreal teenager. “I think I did so well because the course looked a lot like what I’m used to in Quebec, icy and small moguls. So, I just fought really hard and did my best.”

In fact, the course was extremely difficult, as it had frozen to blue ice after three days of rain last week followed by freezing temperatures. A light dusting of snow overnight mildly improved conditions for Wednesday, but the difficulties remained and made for unpredictable results in the finals.

After losing to Yulia Galysheva of Kazakhstan in the semifinal, Dufour-Lapointe defeated Ekaterina Stolyarova of Russia in the small final to land herself in third spot for the day.

Dufour-Lapointe credited her air with giving her an edge. “My 360 at the top has never been better, and I did a really high backflip on the bottom jump,” she said.

Galysheva finished the day in top spot, followed by American Hannah Kearney in second.

Jenn Heil was sixth, Kristi Richards took 10th spot, Audrey Robichaud was 13th and Chelsea Henitiuk was 16th in the finals. Maxime Dufour-Lapointe fell after her top jump and did not make finals. She finished the day in 34th position.

On the men’s side, a dominating first-position qualification run for Alex Bilodeau didn’t materialize into a medal for the Olympic champion after a small mistake against Russian Sergey Volkov in the quarterfinal round. Bilodeau finished the day in fifth position.

“About three moguls before the bottom air in my run against Volkov I made a mistake and caught an edge. That threw me onto one ski and I had to pass by the jump. That mogul was really tough, and I knew it, but I messed it up by mistake,” said the Rosemère, Que., native.

However, Bilodeau was buoyed by his lightning fast, high-scoring qualification run, which landed him almost a point and a half ahead of the field. He said, “In qualifications I did a great run, I was in my game and I dominated. I’m really disappointed about my mistake in the finals today, but I know if I’m skiing to my best I can be at the top.”

Guilbaut Colas of France won Patrick Deneen of the U.S. was second and Bryon Wilson of the U.S. was third.

While five Canadian men made it to the finals, the unfortunate way the dual ladder played out meant that in the first round, two sets of Canadians went head to head: Bilodeau against last week’s second-place finisher Mikael Kingsbury; and Saint-Sauveur’s Cedric Rochon against veteran Drummondville, Que., native Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau.

Bilodeau’s coach, Michel Hamelin commented, “We had some bad luck in the way we qualified for finals for the me — two Canadians were eliminated for sure after the first round, but that’s duals for you, it’s very unpredictable. In fact, from looking at the training runs today you never could have predicted the winners.”

Rochon finished the day in eight spot, Rousseau was 12th, Philippe Marquis of Quebec City, who was skiing with an injured shoulder, was 14th and Kingsbury of Deux-Montagnes, Que., was 16th. Eddie Hicks of Langley, B.C., didn’t make finals and was 43rd for the day.

The Canadian national moguls skiers head to China Thursday to join their aerials teammates for an FIS World Cup event in Beida Lake later in the week.  S-Magazine

Meribel women's World Cup dual moguls results

Meribel men's World Cup dual moguls results