‘GRUMPY’ GUAY
Canadian finishes 10th, but optimistic for Super G
Erik Guay believes he’s still in the hunt for an Olympic medal.
“A few adjustments and maybe a few more kilometres on the track and, hopefully, it will turn around for race day in Super G,” Guay said after his disappointing 10th-place finish Sunday in the downhill.
Admitting he was “grumpy or sad, disappointed, whatever word you want to use to describe today’s run,” Guay squared his shoulders and said: “I’m a veteran. I’ve been through this before. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be able to snap out of it and refocus. I think I have a good chance for Super G, as well.”
Where downhill is the glamour event of alpine skiing, Super G has more gates, more turns and requires more technical skill. Guay is known as a gifted technical skier.
At 32, the Mont-Tremblant, Que., native is one of Canada’s most decorated skiers, a 2011 world champion with 21 appearances on the World Cup podium.
Along with veterans Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway and Bode Miller of the United States — who finished fourth and eighth respectively Sunday — Guay was ostensibly a “favourite” in a sport that is notoriously unpredictable.
He drew a start number — 21 — that had him out of the gate near the middle of the pack of 50, and although silver medallist Christof Innerhofer of Italy took off just before Guay, the other eight who finished before Guay also started before he did, and before the course began to deteriorate. Austria’s Matthias Mayer, who won gold, started 11th.
“I knew it was going to be a tough day for me to step on the podium,”
‘‘Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be able to snap out of it and refocus. I think I have a good chance for Super G, as well.’’
ERIK GUAY
Alpine skier
Guay said afterwards.
“Some things had to happen, and some good things did — I had some good turns on the way down. It’s just a tough track to attack from the back and I wasn’t able to do it today.”
Guay said there’s something off about his form at the moment, and he’s identified what it is — although he wouldn’t discuss it — and he hopes to make the fix in time for next Sunday’s Super G.
“I think there’s a little something missing in my skiing that I need to pick up and I know what it is. I’m not far,” he said. “I have sections where I’m really fast; it’s just a matter of putting it together top to bottom …
“And again, today, I felt like there were some turns that were really great, just the way I wanted to ski, and then there were some turns where I was impatient, dipping inside and losing that outside ski just a tad, and that translates to 10ths of a second on every turn. And it sort of builds up, especially on a tough course like this.”
He was .81 seconds behind Mayer — about as long as two average sneezes or three blinks of the eye.
Guay was the top Canadian, with Ben Thomsen, who is still recovering from a back injury, finishing 19th, and Manny Osborne-Paradis, drawing the 28th start position, ending up 25th.