Julien Petit guided his visually impaired teammate Logan Leach (B3, +17.06 s) to a fifth place in the men’s slalom on Sunday, the last day of the Paralympic Games in Beijing. It was their best result at these Games in five para-alpine ski races, except that Petit was not fully satisfied in a post-race interview.
Posted at 8:37
“Our gap on the winners is quite big, so we would have hoped for better, but with the training we had, it was not bad that we could do”, underlined the guide from Quebec, referring to the two years pandemic which have considerably reduced their time spent on the snow and on the course.
Provisionally sixth after the first run with a delay of 9.20 seconds on the leaders, the Italians Giacomo Bertagnolli and Andrea Ravelli (guide), the Canadian pair climbed one place in the standings in the final run.
Bertagnolli and Ravelli climbed to the top step of the podium ahead of the Austrians Johannes Aigner and Matteo Fleischmann (+0.28 s) and the Slovaks Miroslav Haraus and Maros Hudik (+9.40 s).
Midway through the course of round two, 19-year-old Leach was tipped down, but he was soon able to find a direct line, which helped him gain a more even pace all the way to the bottom of the track. .
Petit draws a harsh conclusion, but he knew what to expect and that is why he is not discouraged by this first Paralympic experience.
“In our pre-Christmas races in Europe, we saw the competition and saw that there were many stronger than us. And once we saw that we were no match, there really wasn’t time left [avant les Jeux]. We learned a lot and saw our strengths and weaknesses. »
Does he want to continue playing his role as a guide for the years to come, knowing that he has put his engineering career on hold in order to devote himself to his sport?
“Yes, clearly and my decision has been made for some time with Logan,” he says with a smile in his voice, taking care to add that his British Columbian teammate is as motivated as him.
In the other events of the Games, the Canadian duo finished sixth in the combined, seventh in the Super-G, ninth in the downhill and could not finish the giant slalom race.