(Sportcom) – Saturday, at the Snowboard Cross World Cup in Sierra Nevada, Spain, Quebecer Éliot Grondin climbed onto the podium for the sixth time in as many occasions since the start of the season, winning the medal silver.
The weather conditions stole the show during the day. The competition had to be paused several times due to poor visibility on the course. Grondin feared for his safety and that of other athletes.
“We couldn’t see anything,” Éliot Grondin quickly said via videoconference. It was pretty horrible and I don’t think the competition should have happened. It was better in the grand final, but before that, in the final stretch, we had no idea where we were going.”
“We were probably going even faster than in qualifying, it’s difficult to go at 80 km/h towards a jump, without knowing exactly where it is. It was windy too, which removed a lot of snow from the course which became extremely difficult.
Grondin finished in second place in a tough final where he was only beaten by the German Leon Ulbricht, who for his part collected the first victory of his career in the World Cup.
Ulbricht took the lead from the first section of the course, closely followed by Grondin. The German took advantage of the battle between Grondin, the American Jake Vedder and the Spaniard Lucas Eguibar, who all seemed to be studying each other, to increase his lead.
Ulbricht ultimately resisted all of the Quebecer’s attacks until the very last second when the recovery was necessary to decide between the two men at the finish line.
“I especially wanted to finish the race in one piece. Ulbricht had an almost perfect race, he made a mistake at the bottom of the course where I was able to catch him, but otherwise he would have been on his own until the end. I’m still on the podium, I can’t be disappointed with my day,” explained the athlete from Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce.
Jake Vedder accompanied Ulbricht and Grondin on the podium.
The Quebecer remains at the top of the provisional general ranking with 540 points after this stage. A second snowboard cross event is on the program on Sunday, at the same location. However, the weather conditions should not be better than those experienced on Saturday.
“Tomorrow [dimanche], it’s supposed to be even worse. We hope that the organization will listen to us this time. At least there were no injuries today, but it could have gone badly. It wasn’t safe, we don’t want to go through that again,” he concluded.