Skier Sharpe looks honed at right time

This is strange and wonderful territory for Canadian freestyle skier Cassie Sharpe.

The 25-year-old claimed a World Cup halfpipe win on Friday in Colorado. Quite suddenly, the Calgary native is able to envision only good things happening to her between now and the end of the Pyeongchang Olympics. That’s quite a mental switch.

“My whole life, I’ve been someone who thinks of the worst-case scenario,” she said Friday.

“This is kind of weird to say about yourself, but I really thought I would get in my own head, that I would really mess myself up mentally, but I’ve been able to reel it in and just maintain my focus and that has been a really big asset.”

Sharpe won in New Zealand in September and leads the World Cup standings with 229 points.

“I feel strong. I feel prepared,” she said. “My tricks are just coming easier than ever. I feel that I’ve put in so much time on everything that it’s just all coming together really nicely.”

Rosanna Crawford shot the lights

out in Ruhpolding, Germany.

The Canmore, Alta., biathlete won bronze in the 15-kilometre individual on Thursday, then checked in with a brilliant fourthplace finish in the 12.5-km mass start Sunday. She was 4.6 seconds away from another bronze and the only woman of 30 to shoot clean.

Driver Chris Spring and a newly formed crew took four-man bobsled bronze for Canada in Switzerland on Sunday. Spring teamed up with Lascelles Brown, Bryan Barnett and Neville Wright to finish behind a pair of German sleds with a two-run time of 2:08.95.

Julien Locke of Nelson, B.C., was the top Canadian at a World Cup cross-country sprint race in Germany on Saturday, finishing 15th.