Squamish snowboarders reached the podium in both the men's and women's FIS snowboardcross World Cup in Lake Placid, N.Y. on Saturday (March 1).Maelle Ricker won the silver medal to maintain top position, 350 points ahead of U.S. rival Lindsey Jacobellis, in the World Cup overall rankings after seven races.With only two World Cups left, Ricker appears poised to take the season championship in a few weeks time.Meanwhile, Tom Velisek fought back from a series of setbacks to hunt down bronze behind fellow Canadian Drew Neilson (silver) and Nick Baumgartner (gold) of the U.S. The 600 points accompanying the medal is critical in launching Velisek back into podium contention in sixth overall after 25th and 26th finishes in Korea and Japan respectively dropped him to 12th overall."I was getting sick of not winning," said Velisek while on the road heading to Quebec for the season's second last World Cup race on Friday (March 7)."This year has been a lot of mental [work]. I was being too tentative, too nice, worried about what could happen. You have to ride so aggressively out there the level is getting so high that if you're not pushing 110 per cent you don't really have a chance."A new training strategy complemented his competitive mind state. Instead of riding trial runs solo, Velisek used a head-cam and tested the course with other boarders. "It kind of got rid of the surprises that would come in the first round of racing so you can go ahead and make those mistakes in training."After advancing easily through the first two four-racer heats, Velisek got in a physical battle for second place with Baumgartner as his American rival tried to cut him off the course in the semi-final race. Although he fended Baumgartner off, he eventually wiped out after accidentally clipping fellow Canadian Mike Robertson's board and had to pursue the rest of the pack from a standstill. Amazingly, Velisek regained about 100 feet of distance to make second position right at the finish but the race was called back because one of the starting gates hadn't opened on time with the other three, he said.Velisek fell behind in fourth position after overshooting a jump but was determined not to let the podium slip away."I just said there's no way I'm going to take fourth place. So I started hunting them down, pushing really hard and I was really nailing the bottom section of the course and I pulled out wide on the final stretch to the finish jump."With Speiser in sight nearing the finishing line, Velisek gave the final jump all he had."I flew off the jump probably further than I've ever gone in my life and came down for like 30 feet up just flat pretty much on the finish line."The daredevil launch beat Speiser just in time to earn Velisek the bronze.Velisek also placed third with Neilson in a team exhibition race the athletes are hoping will be introduced in the 2014 Olympics.
