Canadian sisters dominate moguls event
• The three sisters awoke Sunday morning with hoarse voices after a party like none other for the Dufour-Lapointe family.
“I feel like I won the Super Bowl,” Maxime Dufour- Lapointe said groggily over the phone from Montreal. “It still feels so unreal to me.”
The Dufour- Lapointe sisters indeed made history Saturday by sweeping the World Cup medals in Val- Saint Come, Que.
The race marked the first time three Canadian women occupied all three perches on the World Cup moguls podium and the first time three sisters — of any nationality — finished a World Cup moguls race ranked one-two-three.
In some ways, the sweep proved more special to the family than the Sochi Olympics, where Justine won gold and Chloe seized silver. Off to the side during the medal ceremony, Maxime wept tears of joy for her younger sisters and sorrow for herself as she finished 12th.
This time around, no one was left out. Justine finished the day with a score of 86.49 in the super final. Chloe wasn’t too far behind with 85.09 and Maxime grabbed third with 80.76.
“To make a sweep happen, you all need to be on top of your game,” said Maxime. “For the three of us all to be top of our game on the same day and nail three runs, one after the other, is quite incredible. And to top that, it was at home in front of our friends and family. “It was just surreal.” Also on Saturday, Mikael Kingsbury, of Deux- Montagnes, Que., won his 30th World Cup event with gold in the men’s moguls. Laurent Dumais, of Quebec City, reached the World Cup podium for the first time in his career in third place.
In the midst of the insanity of her third consecutive World Cup downhill podium, Larisa Yurkiw received an email from Canada Saturday requesting comment on her latest triumph.
The independent ski racer from Owen Sound, Ont., responded with a quote from none other than Jerry Seinfeld.
“Keep your head up in failure,” the comedian said back in 2014, “and your head down in success.”
Yurkiw, 27, kept her head up when she suffered a catastrophic knee injury and took two years to recover before the Sochi Olympics. She kept her head up when she was cut by the national team and reached out to sponsors to help pay the $240,000 it costs to race each year on the World Cup circuit.
On Saturday, Yurkiw followed Seinfeld’s advice and kept her head down after winning silver and landing one step down from American superstar Lindsey Vonn on the podium at a World Cup stop in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. With her latest performance, Yurkiw is ranked second in the world in downhill behind only Vonn.
On Saturday, Vonn continued to rewrite the record book by breaking Annemarie Moser- Proell’s standard for most World Cup downhill victories with 37. Lara Gut, of Switzerland, finished third.
Vonn won the World Cup Super- G race on Sunday in Cortina. Yurkiw came in 12th.