(Calgary) Valérie Grenier and James Crawford will headline the Canadian delegation taking part in the Alpine Skiing World Championships, which kick off Monday in Courchevel and Méribel, France.
A team of 13 skiers was unveiled Saturday by Alpine Canada. The competitions will be launched by the women’s alpine combined on Monday and will conclude with the men’s slalom on February 19.
Franco-Ontarian Grenier won a World Cup stop in Slovenia earlier this season when she won the giant slalom.
Crawford, of Toronto, won bronze in the alpine combined at the Beijing Olympics in February and has two World Cup podium finishes in the downhill this season.
PHOTO LISA LEUTNER, REUTERS ARCHIVES
James Crawford
Marie-Michèle Gagnon, from Lac-Etchemin, is the most experienced of the group: she will participate in her eighth Worlds. Another Quebecer will accompany her to France, Laurence St-Germain, from Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges.
The other members of the team are Ontarian Alli Nullmeyer; Albertans Britt Richardson and brothers Erik and Jeff Read; and British Columbians Amelia Smart, Broderick Thompson, Brodie Seger and Cam Alexander.
Seger and Crawford had finished at the foot of the podium at the 2021 Worlds, in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Seger had achieved the feat in the super-G; Crawford in the Alpine Combined.
Albertan Trevor Philip was supposed to participate in his sixth Worlds, but a leg injury suffered at the super-G in Cortina on January 29 will keep him out.
Canada has won 29 medals at the Alpine Skiing World Championships. Quebecer Erik Guay is the last to be on the top step of the podium, at the super-G in St-Moritz, Switzerland, in 2017.