(Silvaplana) Quebec snowboarder Laurie Blouin concluded her season with a ninth-place finish in slopestyle at the World Cup in Silvaplana, Switzerland, on Saturday.
After finishing fourth in qualifying on Thursday, Blouin had hopes of a good result for the final, but she struggled on her two runs.
Blouin landed a little too far on the first jump of her first run and she could never find the rhythm to eventually earn a 10.00 mark. On the second run, it was on the second jump that things got tough and she only collected 27.75 points.
“I was too big there on both runs. On the second jump, I managed to save him a bit, but it made me lose a lot of speed. For the last jump, I had no speed at all,” observed Blouin.
American Julia Marino won the gold medal with a score of 87.25 on her second run. Australia’s Tess Coady (85.00) took silver as Austria’s Anna Gasser (82.25) climbed to the third step of the podium.
Jasmine Baird, the other Canadian to make the final, finished seventh with a score of 64.50 in the first run.
The final had originally been scheduled for Sunday, but difficult weather forecasts forced organizers to move it up to Saturday. However, Blouin had no difficulty adjusting to this change.
“We’re used to it. They are forecasting a storm on Sunday so maybe it would have been nice on Sunday morning, but if the storm had been ahead of us we wouldn’t have been able to go. It was windy, but I’ve been through worse than that,” she said.
Blouin has had some mixed results this season. From one competition to another, she was either in the race for a medal or out of the top 10.
The Quebecer won a silver medal in slopestyle at the World Cup in Calgary in February, and she was coming back from a top 5 in the big jump at the World Championships, held in Georgia three weeks ago.
“If I compare to my other seasons, there have been ups and downs. I still had success and I’m happy. Sometimes I made mistakes and I didn’t really understand where it was coming from. I can’t be too hard on myself,” Blouin said.
His season may be over, but Blouin will be busy for a few more weeks before really taking a break. She will participate in two photo ops with sponsors before resuming her preparation for next season by traveling to Australia in August.
