GUAY EYES FUTURE OVERALL
With one Canadian set to retire — Thomas Grandi — another is hoping to emerge as an overall threat in coming seasons.
Erik Guay scored major points in four of his last five World Cup downhills to vault into third in the final standings. He placed third in the season-ending super G at Lenzerheide. Next season, the mild-mannered Canadian will look to add a third discipline to his scoring repertoire.
“I’d like to ski more GS next year. I’m not going to do slalom … forget about that, but giant slalom for sure.”
He’s not yet thinking about his summer training regimen, though.
“Not yet, I’m still thinking about golf right now,” Guay said after tying for third in his super G heat in the nations team event. “For next year, I want to get some more victories. I only have one under my belt, so I guess I’ll be aiming for that. I finished third in the overall downhill this year — I’d like to improve on that.”
Guay lamented another missed opportunity for the Canadian team to podium in the team event Friday.
“I wasn’t really happy with my run. I couldn’t really get it going the way I wanted to like yesterday. But we still got some points there,” he said.
Guay, in ninth, led three Canadian men into the top 25 of the overall standings, with John Kucera 22nd and Francois Bourque 23rd. Manny Osborne-Paradis was 12th in the downhill standings. Guay said the season has gone significantly better than the team had hoped.
“Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s been a lot better,” Guay said. “A lot of guys didn’t expect to get medals this year. Johnny came through and finished third [overall] in super G and Manny’s put down some solid results, good podium finishes."
“We’ve been together for quite a while. Our team has been progressing for a few years and getting better and better. This year was just a breakthrough year where we got those podium finishes we needed.”
Like many of the speed racers, Guay reacted negatively to FIS discussions about dropping super G from the World Cup calendar.
“I think that’s crap,” Guay said. “I can’t believe they would do that. If anything they should get rid of the super combi. It’s just a confusing event, people don’t like watching it. Super G is such a cool event — you get one go at it, one inspection, then you go for it.”