Jane Emerick
Special to The Chief
The start of the snowboarding events at the 2006 Winter Olympics has left Squamish's snowboarding hopefuls falling short of their anticipated results.
Squamish resident Justin Lamoureux opened the snowboarding events, competing in the men's halfpipe competition on Sunday (Feb. 12). He did not qualify for the finals and finished in 21st position. Dominique Vallée and Maelle Ricker of Squamish also failed to qualify for the finals on Monday (Feb. 13) competing in the women's halfpipe event. Vallée and Ricker finished 21st and 23rd respectively.
CEO of the Canadian Snowboard Federation, Tom McIllfaterick, said the trio would find their results to be short of where they were capable of finishing.
"It is disappointing that none of them made the finals, we were definitely expecting at least that," he said. "At this point we will have to look at what happened and then I guess it's back to the drawing board."
All three of the competitors remain in Italy and were unavailable for comment.
Ricker, being one of only two athletes on the national snowboard team to compete in more than one event, will also be competing in the women's snowboard cross on Friday (Feb. 17).
McIllfaterick said Ricker had been focusing more on her second event and the snowboard cross is where she would be expecting her best results, along with rest of the Canadian competitors.
"We are hoping for some medals from the team in the boardercross," he said.
Shaun White of the United States won the men's halfpipe followed by countrymen Danny Kass. Markku Koski of Finland took the bronze. The top finishing Canadian was Crispin Lipscomb in 11th place. In the women another American, Hannah Teter, took the top spot and silver also went to American, Gretchen Bleiler. Bronze went to Kjersti Buaas Oe of Norway. Sarah Conrad was the top finishing Canadian in 15th position.
