Storming weekend for Chemmy
Monday December 21, 2009 - Email this article to a friend

For Britain's No 1 female skier things are beginning to look up.  She got off to a poor start and her pre-season talk of an Olympic medal, even a gold, looked a bit far fetched.

On December 6^th she came 15^th in Lake Louise, Canada, in the Super G.  Last week she was 11^th in the Giant Slalom in Are, Sweden, and now she has made the top 10 in one of the events and a top 15th place in another.

It puts her 26^th in the World rankings, still a long way away from a podium but nevertheless she can take some optimism from her current form.

In the combined she put in a convincing first fun in the Downhill to finish in a time of 1:48.40,  but she was 3.74 seconds behind race winner Lindsay Vonn  who, moments earlier, had laid down a blistering run to take the lead by +1.52 seconds over second place Maria Riesch.

Chemmy then had a solid run in the slalom, moving up three places to finish the race in 9th position.

Big confidence booster"I'm really happy with the downhill positing. I came 12th in the downhill this morning and I made a couple of mistakes, tactical line errors because the light was down and it's quite difficult to see. However, when I came down I was really happy with the position but seeing how far I was behind Lindsay I realised that there are a couple of changes I'll need to make," she commented after the race."

"The result though has really blasted my confidence and that's three top 15 finishes in three different events all in the last two weeks".

See here for how the men have done in Val Gardena, Italy, this weekend and who won.

Saturday's Women's Dowhill race was cancelled due to poor visibility and light snowfall but the Super G went ahead on Sunday and Chemmy put in another great performance coming 15th.

 "Chemmy skied a bit too round at the top and gave the course a bit too much respect but she skied the bottom well," the British Alpine ski head coach, Mark Tilston, said after the race.

"She is happy with the result but a little disappointed too as she knows if she had lost half of what she did lose at the top section it would have had a very different result”.

Meanwhile, the Biritish snowboarder Zoe Gillings came 18th in the second LG Snowboard FIS World Cup Snowboard Cross event in Telluride, USA.

"I’m really disappointed with the result today, even though I am treating each World Cup as preparation for the Olympics, and training specific areas of each race I still thought I had done enough to qualify," she said.

"It shows just how tight the competition is so I’m now focussing 100 per cent on the next World Cup in Austria in January.”

The American superstar Lyndsey Vonn won the Super Combined with Germany's Maria Riesch coming second. The Super G was won by Fraenzi Aufdenblatten of Switzerland.

Vonn and Riesch are both at the top of their form at the moment and it would take a wild optimist to think Chemmy can realistically beat them at next February's Olympic Games. But in sport, never say never.

For the full results of the World Cup skiing see here.

This video was filmed at Val DIsere just before the weekends races and Chemmy talks about the World Cup so far and her Winter Olympic dream.

Bookmark this page

Related Articles