Mielzynski’s is top Canadian in women’s downhill with 16th place finish

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This article was published 09/02/2022 (1699 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ZHANGJIAKOU, China – There was a mixture of disappointment and pride for Canada’s alpine ski team after all four women finished outside the top 15 in the women’s slalom.

Laurence St-Germain, Erin Mielzynski, Ali Nullmeyer and Amelia Smart all qualified for the second run but made too many errors to challenge for the podium.

Mielzynski was the top Canadian finisher in 16th, while St-Germain, Nullmeyer and Smart finished 17th, 21st and 27th, respectively.

Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova won the gold medal with a combined time of 1:44.98, just fractions of a second ahead of Austria’s Katharina Liensberger and Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener, who won the silver and bronze.

Mielzynski said the result was disappointing for the Canadians, who had come to Beijing with podium hopes.

St-Germain concurred, but said she remained proud of the effort that had been put in.

“For sure on paper I’m not so proud of the result, especially having done less well than in Pyeongchang,” St-Germain said. “But I’m happy because my goal to get to the medal I wanted was to arrive confident and attack, which I did.”

She said she felt she was fast enough to have challenged the top contenders but was dogged by costly mistakes.

She also noted that the difficult conditions on the course left little room for error.

“When the snow is very dry at altitude, like in Colorado, it is your sharpening that you have to adjust,” she said. “Here, it’s halfway between ice and very dry snow, so your skis have to be very sharp, except that as soon as you make a mistake, they respond too much.”

While Vlhova won her country’s first alpine ski medal in brilliant fashion, other skiers struggled.

Those include American favourite Mikaela Shiffrin, who failed to complete her first run after skidding out of control and missing a gate early in the race.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2022.