World Champ Richards takes silver medal in Sweden

ARE, Sweden, March 7, 2008 – World champion Kristi Richards of Summerland, B.C., won a silver medal today, her best performance of the 2007-08 World Cup freestyle ski season.

It was the third medal of the season for the 2007 moguls world champion, following two bronze-medal showings, in Tignes and Deer Valley.

Alex Bilodeau

Richards, 26, duplicated her second-place in the qualification round won by Jillian Rachelli Vogtli of the United States, but the American faded to 15th in the final. Winning her third straight World Cup was Aiko Uemura of Japan, to remain atop the women’s overall moguls standings. She scored 24.43 to Richards’ 23.73, while a third-straight World Cup bronze medal went to Emiko Torito of the United States in 23.00.

Maxime Dufour-Lapointe of Montreal placed sixth, for her best-ever World Cup single moguls performance, while her younger sister, Chloé, also of Montreal, was 10th. Audrey Robichaud of Quebec City was 11th.

Dale Begg-Smith of Australia won the men’s moguls final after qualifying sixth in 24.89. He edged Nathan Roberts of the U.S. for the gold 25.94 to 25.88, while Dmitriy Reiherd of Kazakhstan was a surprising third in 25.47.

Top Canadian was Alex Bilodeau in sixth in 24.42, a performance he says he’d rather forget on a day when many skiers had trouble with the quickly-changing snow conditions.

The morning qualification round changed within an hour from powder snow to slick, as Vincent Marquis of Quebec struggled to a 30th-place finish. Marquis remains fifth in the overall standings while Bilodeau remains third overall behind leader Begg-Smith.

“I’m putting an ‘x’ on this performance and moving on,” said Bilodeau, 20. “This week I was skiing well, really well, but today, I didn’t do 60 per cent of what I was doing in training.”

It appeared the Canadian men might take a run at a medal, though, after Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau of Drummondville, Que., and Warren Tanner of West Vancouver were third and fourth respectively in the qualification round. But Rousseau placed 14th in 21.60 and Tanner finished 16th after going off course.

“I was in position to do really well, and I didn’t take advantage of that opportunity,” said Rousseau.

World Cup action resumes later today with the aerial finals in Switzerland, followed by a dual moguls competition here, Saturday.

posted March 7, 2008