Corinne Suter takes women's super-G at Lake Louise, Gagnon 8th for Canada
Swiss skier placed 2nd, 3rd earlier in weekend in downhill races won by Sofia Goggia
Corinne Suter finally stood atop the podium and Canada's Marie-Michèle Gagnon regained some confidence in Sunday's World Cup super-G in Lake Louise, Alta.
After finishing second and third in two downhills, Switzerland's Suter laid down a winning time of one minute 20.75 seconds on the 2.5-kilometre track for her first career victory in Banff National Park.
"Finally," the reigning Olympic downhill champion said after the race held in brilliant sun and temperatures of minus-12 C. "I was dreaming a lot of Lake Louise because I like to be here so much, but I never was the first one. I'm super happy with my run today.
"Two or three mistakes, but when you're fast, it happens."
Austria's Cornelia Huetter was second just 2-100ths of a second back of Suter.
Huetter was third in Friday's season-opening downhill, but sat out Saturday's race with concussion symptoms stemming from a crash last season.
Ragnhild Mowinckel of Norway placed third Sunday in 1:20.91. Italy's Sofia Goggia fell short of a second straight Lake Louise sweep in fifth after winning both downhills.
Gagnon of Lac-Etchemin, Que., finished eighth in 1:21.48 after placing ninth a year ago.
WATCH | Gagnon 8th in Lake Louise super-G after downhill struggles:
The 33-year-old's confidence was bruised after struggling with the course's icy patches and finishing 24th in Friday's opening downhill and 25th of 42 finishers the next day.
"It feels like a small victory today," Gagnon said. "My confidence kind of took a hit and to be able to do this today, is a very decent result.
"If I had come into today with some confidence then I think I could have been really dangerous for podium contention, but this is really nice."
A top-30 result is coveted because that is where World Cup points and prize money are. Points contribute to ranking, which in turn determines start position at subsequent races.
Valérie Grenier of St. Isidore, Ont., returned to Lake Louise for the first time since her fifth-place finish in 2018 and was 31st in 1:22.60.
"It's my first race back in a little bit and all of a sudden when I started skiing I felt like I didn't know how to ski," Grenier said. "I wasn't really feeling like myself."
Toronto's Candace Crawford was 35th of 40 finishers in 1:23.24 after placing 36th last year in Lake Louise while Stefanie Fleckenstein of Whistler, B.C., didn't finish the race.
WATCH | Full coverage of Sunday's super-G:
Mental block after downhill crash
She was joined by nine others including Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland, who captured her third overall World Cup super-G title in 2021. She won her first World Cup giant slalom in more than six years a week ago in Killington, Vt.
Each women's World Cup race in Lake Louise offered $172,000 split between first to 30th on a descending scale, with Suter earning $65,000.
For Grenier, Sunday's race marked the 26-year-old's first completed super-G on the World Cup circuit since Feb. 28, 2021 when she was 34th In Val di Fassa, Italy. Grenier had attempted the speed race a few times since without much success after suffering a mental block following a serious crash.
At the 2019 alpine world championships, she broke her right leg in four places and her right ankle travelling about 130 kilometres per hour in a downhill training run in Åre, Sweden. She needed a second surgery five months later when the bone wasn't healing properly.
She was back on skis Oct. 17, 2020 following multiple surgeries, physiotherapy and COVID-19, finishing 25th in giant slalom in Sölden, Austria.
But it was a different story a month earlier when Grenier stood at the top of a mountain for her first training run post-injury and couldn't push out of the gate in Zermatt, Switzerland. The crash kept replaying in her head.
WATCH | Grenier suffers mental block upon return from injury:
The mental challenges forced Grenier to abandon thoughts of downhill or super-G and shift to giant slalom, a more technical and slower discipline. She raced 13 times before a disqualification at her second Olympics last February in Beijing after getting caught on a gate just seconds from the end of her first run.
For a long time, it seemed I wasn't going to get back to my old self.— Canadian skier Valerie Grenier on the mental challenges after her training crash
When she attempted a super-G on March 5, a "crazy scared" Grenier pulled up halfway down an icy and bumpy course in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.
"As much as I wanted to fight through it, you can't when you don't feel 100 per cent and you're going that fast," said Grenier, who grew up in the Ontario farming community of St. Isidore, east of Ottawa. "It was hard [mentally] to [stop] because that's not me. I'll keep going through anything, but at that moment there was no way.
"For a long time, it seemed I wasn't going to get back to my old self."
Last month in Colorado, Grenier continued her GS training while adding a healthy diet of super-G to get accustomed to speed again and how the terrain "pushes you around," new Canada women's coach Karin Harjo told CBC Sports recently. Grenier felt strong, didn't suffer a setback from back issues that bothered her last season and noted "huge progress" from a mental perspective.
"Being scared is not in my head," she said. "I'm having fun and thinking about what I'm working on. I feel like myself again."
Lake Louise has been a regular stop on the men's and women's World Cup downhill circuits for over 30 years, and the traditional opener of the men's and women's speed seasons in late fall.
The future of the races in Banff National Park is unclear.
The introduction of women's World Cup giant slaloms in Mont-Tremblant, Que., from 2023 to 2025, and falling on the same traditional weekend as women's speed races in Lake Louise, makes it unlikely Canada will retain the only women's downhill in North America at least in the near future.
Alpine Canada has committed to keeping a men's speed race in Western Canada with Lake Louise a "lead option" if some changes are made to its financial operations, Alpine Canada chief executive officer Therese Brisson said Sunday.
Next up for the women is a giant slalom World Cup event Dec. 10-11 in Sestriere, Italy.
With files from CBC Sports
