Canadian skiers shine in Old Quebec
Thousands watch first FIS race
It was a spectacular scene right out of the most popular cross-country ski races in Norway and Sweden.
Thousands of people pressed up to the fences on the streets of Vieux Quebec on Friday afternoon as the city hosted its first ever FIS World Cup race, a high-speed, skate-ski team sprint on an 800-metre track near the National Assembly that featured climbs, tight corners, bridges and even a jump.
They were there to cheer on reigning world champions Devon Kershaw, a Sudbury, Ont., native and hometown hero Alex Harvey, of nearby St-Ferréol-les-Neiges.
And the duo didn’t disappoint. They made the 10-team final — each skier racing three legs of two laps — and were pushing for a podium spot on the decisive final leg when Swedish star Emil Joensson, who was sitting third, crashed after catching an edge in soft snow and spun the trailing Harvey into the side fencing.
“I knew right there it was done,” Harvey, who recovered to earn the Canadian pair a fifth-place finish, said.
“When your hand touches the snow in sprint racing, the gap is just too big to make up. “That is sprint racing. “You never would expect (Joensson) to go down, but there is nothing you can do,” he added.
The men and women race individual sprints Saturday. One good run: Marie-Michele Gagnon of Lac-Etchemin, posted the second-fastest slalom run Friday to lift herself to an eighth-place finish in a World Cup super combined race in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Gagnon’s time of 42.81 seconds was just 0.11 off the pace of Slovenia’s Tina Maze, who was also fastest in the Super G and won the race with a combined time of 2:01.76, nearly a second better than Nicole Hosp, of Austria.
Gagnon made a big mistake up top in the Super G run and finished with a combined time of 2:03.83.
“It was a pretty good day, really good in slalom,” said Gagnon, whose career-best super combined result was a seventh last season in St. Moritz.
“I was so mad when I saw I didn’t win the slalom run. It would have been my first time and I was like ‘Today’s the day,’ but no.”