Squamish's Justin Lamoureux failed to qualify for the finals in men's halfpipe at the FIS World Snowboarding Championships this week in La Molina, Spain.
Lamoureux, who made it through Wednesday's (Jan. 19) elimination round, scored 17.8 points in the semifinals on Thursday (Jan. 20) to finish 18th in the competition. Brad Martin of Ancaster, Ont., did qualify for the 12-man finals. He scored 19.6 points during his two afternoon runs to finish 11th overall.
Nathan Johnstone of Australia won the competition with 26.8 points, followed by Iouri Podladtchikov of Switzerland and Markus Mallin of Finland.
Whistler's Mercedes Nicoll was the top Canadian woman in the competition, placing eighth. Holly Crawford of Australia placed first, followed by Switzerland's Ursina Haller and Jiayu Lu of China.
Lamoureux and Nicoll were the top Canadians in the halfpipe competition at the 2010 Olympic Games, placing seventh and sixth, respectively.
"I'm not overjoyed with finals," Nicoll said in a statement issued by Canada Snowboard. "I had a bad first run and fell on the second run. That being said, I am definitely happy to have made the finals, which was my objective. A podium would have been really nice.
"Mother Nature played some games on us. I played it really safe today because of the strong winds."
