The Canadian roster for the 2011 FIS World Snowboard Championships will have some local flavour after it was announced that Squamish's Justin Lamoureux and Brackendale's Marie-Andrée Racine both made the team.
Lamoureux, 34, will compete in the halfpipe event at the World Championships, which run for nine days beginning Friday (Jan. 14) in La Molina, Spain. He posted the top Canadian men's result at the 2010 Olympics, finishing seventh in the halfpipe. He is also the 2009 World Cup champion, having won the Crystal Globe in men's halfpipe last season. At the 2005 World Championships in Whistler, Lamoureux won the silver medal.
For Racine, it will be a unique opportunity as her event, the slopestyle, will be on display for the first time in World Championships history. The discipline is under evaluation for inclusion at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Slopestyle involves an athlete performing tricks in the air as well as on rails and boxes. Unlike racing, there is no clock and competitors are awarded points for the style and difficulty of their run by a group of judges.
According to the team's head coach, Leo Addington, the team should be more than ready for the event.
"We've had a good season so far, aligned with the objectives that we gave ourselves," he stated in a statement. "The riders have had good training camps recently, and will be competitive at the Worlds in La Molina."
More than 370 athletes from 44 countries are slated to take part in the sport's most important event outside the Olympics. Squamish residents Maëlle Ricker, an Olympic champion, and Tom Velisek are slated to compete in snowboard cross at the World Championships, which are scheduled Jan. 14 to 22 in La Molina.
For more information on the team, visit www.snowboardcanada.ca.
