Quebec snowboarder Eliot Grondin won the last stage of the season in the Snowboard Cross World Cup on Sunday in Veysonnaz.
Grondin, who is from Lévis, beat Frenchmen Merlin Surget and Léo Le Blé Jaques in the super-final. Opponents he knows well, which would have helped him win this event.
“I’m very close to the French, and we’ve been training together for the last two days. So I learned a lot about their racing lines, their approach to the corners, so in the super final I knew I had to go left in the penultimate corner to get the inside in the last and I secure first place. […] I think I executed well the plan I had developed with the coaches,” Grondin said via videoconference after the race.
It was his first World Cup victory this season, and his third podium. Grondin thus bounced back from finishing eighth last week in Reiteralm, Austria.
“It felt good to end the season with a victory, because it was not easy in Austria last weekend. To finish on the top step of the podium is really a beautiful “feeling“And it’s going to be good for the summer, motivation-wise,” explained the principal.
Grondin, 20, won silver in snowboard cross at the Beijing Olympics last month and bronze in team snowboard cross. He therefore drew up an initial positive assessment of his campaign, even if he did not achieve all of his objectives.
“I’m really happy with my season. It was tougher at first, but with the two medals in two races at the Olympics — that was the icing on the cake. It wasn’t very easy after the Olympics, but to be able to finish on a good note like that, I’m happy with my season,” he said.
“I didn’t get the crystal globe I was looking for, but I finished strong and I’m happy with the end of the campaign,” added Grondin, who now plans to enjoy a well-deserved vacation.
Among the ladies, Quebecer Audrey McManiman, from Saint-Ambroise-de-Kildare, finished at the foot of the podium.
The event was won by the British Charlotte Bankes, ahead of the American Faye Gulini and the French Manon Petit Lenoir.
The other Canadian entered in the snowboard cross event, Maryeta Odine, settled for eighth place.