(Montreal) The Canadian bosses are playing their last cards to secure an Olympic qualification for the Freestyle Skiing World Cup in Deer Valley, where two rounds of moguls will be presented on Thursday and Friday.
The process is complex (see below) and a good performance will not guarantee a place in Beijing. Mikaël Kingsbury, reigning Olympic champion, is for the moment the only hard worker guaranteed to get his pass, although it is almost in the pocket for Justine Dufour-Lapointe, gold medalist in Sochi and silver in PyeongChang.
Here is a brief overview of the other athletes who could qualify for the next Olympics.
Chloe Dufour-Lapointe
The Sochi Games silver medalist must have breathed a sigh of relief after scoring eighth place at Tremblant, her best result in two years in singles and just her second top-10. A big weekend awaits him in Utah.
Berkley brown
The 21-year-old Ontarian has three top-16 results over the past two years and is the second Canadian in the World Cup standings behind Chloe this season. She took the 18 twicee rank at Tremblant. His best singles result was his 11e place in Sweden earlier this season.
Justine Dufour-Lapointe
Two top-10 singles and a ninth place in parallel at the 2021 Worlds should allow her to try to become the second woman only to collect three Olympic medals after the Norwegian Kari Traa. She just had her best weekend of the season at Tremblant.
Sofiane Gagnon
She missed the Tremblant stage due to COVID-19, which could deprive her of important points. Fourth in the duels at the Almaty Worlds, she finished ninth in Idre Fjäll, Sweden and obtained two top-16s this season.
Gabriel Dufresne
His 10e Friday’s place earned him several points, but a disappointing 28e place on Saturday made sure that his weekend on Quebec soil made him stand still.
Brenden Kelly
After a difficult stage at Alpe d’Huez in December, the British Columbian recovered well with a 13e and a 10e place in Tremblant. The one who took fourth place in moguls at the same time as the last World Championships has four top-16s for two years and one 17e place at the Worlds.
Laurent Dumais
Sixth at the last Worlds, Dumais started his season with the two rounds of Tremblant, where he took the 15e and 14e places. He needs to have a good weekend in Deer Valley to get ahead of everyone ahead of him.
Selection process
Carving out a place in freestyle skiing does not only mean being one of the best in your sport, but also being among the best of all the disciplines that make up freestyle skiing: moguls, jumps, halfpipe, big jump, as well as ski cross (an alpine discipline, but relegated to acro skiing in the Olympic process).
These five disciplines have a maximum of 30 places to be allocated, of which a maximum of 16 per gender and each discipline cannot send more than four athletes of the same sex. One discipline cannot pick up places from another either: if five bosses have collected more points in the selection process than the fourth ski cross athlete, for example, the women’s mogul team cannot get a fifth place. to replace the fourth that ski cross could have benefited from.
The Canadian mogul team for the Beijing Olympics will be released on January 24. Mogul competitions will be held at Secret Garden from February 3-6.