(Saint-Côme) Between a friend who avoided the worst in a spectacular accident and a wide open table, Mikaël Kingsbury knew how to navigate and clear his way to the highest step of the podium, Saturday, at the World Cup freestyle skiing in Val Saint-Côme. However, nothing was easy for the great champion.
Just before setting off alongside the dashing Filip Gravenfors in the final of the parallel event, Kingsbury had quite a scare.
In the small final, two of his best friends fought for the bronze medal. Matt Graham and Benjamin Cavet were face to face at the entrance to the first jump. However, somewhat unhinged, Cavet fell and slipped into his rival’s lane. The only problem was that Graham hadn’t landed yet. The Australian finished his jump on Cavet’s floating body and his skis landed on his chest, inches from his face.
Cavet took a while to get up. He calmly went back up the slope to get one of his skis and went back down fragilely to the applause of a silent crowd for at least two minutes, caught up in the impressive incident.
“I gave you some great images,” Cavet said to a Radio-Canada cameraman at the bottom of the track. In the end, he escaped unscathed. But waking up at the hotel on Sunday morning will undoubtedly be painful.
Barely
Still, this accident shook Kingsbury before his descent. A stress that he would have liked to do without given his discomfiture the day before. “It’s scary. It’s dangerous, because our skis are sharp almost like skates. “It was the time of day when I was the most stressed,” he revealed later in the evening. It’s scary, because these are the most dangerous moments. It’s scary, but you need to concentrate on your business quickly. »
What he did. After being shaken in the semi-final when his stick plunged into a bump, the Quebecer was determined to put a smile on the faces of the fans present, despite another freezing evening during which even the most resistant ended up waddling on the spot.
His descent against the 19-year-old Swede was worthy of an Olympic final. A priori, Gravenfors’ descent looked more solid, more convincing. In addition, he crossed the finish line 0.65 seconds before the local favorite.
But if the decision seemed clear, the judges took more than a minute and a half to deliver their verdict. They finally gave Kingsbury the benefit of the doubt, by three points, giving him a fifth victory this season.
Even the winner did not seem completely convinced of the result during its projection on the new giant screen that the station had.
“I didn’t see the video, but when I got downstairs I saw him make a mistake,” Kingsbury commented half an hour after the results were revealed.
But don’t look for any controversy or local bias. This victory was unequivocal, according to Gravenfors: “I had a good race. I had a higher degree of difficulty, but my landing was very bad. I crossed my fingers. But it’s Mik. This guy is very good! […] Mikaël deserves this victory. »
An open table
With the retirement at the start of the day of Walter Wallberg, the winner of the day before, and the ousting of Ikuma Horishima in the round of 16, Kingsbury had a wide open table in front of him, as one would say in tennis.
“Inside, you try not to have emotion, because that’s where you can get trapped. It’s fun to be in the final against Ikuma, because for me, it’s the final of mogul skiing. And Walter too. But we are fighting for yellow jerseys. Of course he was happy when I crashed yesterday. »
Still, Kingsbury had a lot to do in the final against the best worker still on the track. “I stayed calm at the top of the course. I had the information from my coaches, it seems like we were more ready than yesterday. »
Quebecers Elliot Vaillancourt, Julien Viel and Louis-David Chalifoux were all eliminated in the round of 16.
Anthony is right about Schwinghammer again
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Australia’s Jakara Anthony, center, celebrates gold with American silver medalist Jaelin Kauf, left, and American bronze medalist Olivia Giaccio.
During her first final on the World Cup circuit, in Georgia in December, Maia Schwinghammer bowed to Jakara Anthony, the best skier in the world.
The two athletes met again, this time in the quarter-finals. Schwinghammer exerted a lot of pressure on her rival. “I knew what I had to do and I pushed hard. At one point, I told myself that things were going very quickly. »
Until his right stick sank into a dent. “I was a little too far behind and my poles got caught. I really pushed it. I’m proud of my skiing and I think it opens the door to a ton of possibilities,” she said at the end of her weekend.
The Saskatoon athlete still managed to get back on the course to ultimately finish in eighth place, the best result among the Canadians.
Anthony, for her part, took advantage of her podium subscription to climb to the top step two waves later. This is his eighth victory in nine races.