Park City — Both American Hannah Kearney and Canadian Alex Bilodeau desire to do what no mogul skier has done — win back-to-back Olympic gold medals. The keeping safe Olympic champions shared the top of the podium at the FIS Freestyle World Cup at Deer Valley Saturday night in front of about 8,500 followers. “You can glimpse, hear and feel the crowd,” said Kearney, whose final tally of 25.21 won her a second triumph in two days of competition. “So I use it for perform. There’s a chance that this is a larger gathering than we will have at the Olympics. And there is certainly more persons cheering for me than there are going to be at the Olympics, so I utilised it, and I tried to put on a show.”
“This just gives me momentum,” she said, “and I want to go contend again right now.” U.S. teammate Eliza Outtrim made the six-person super final, and she barely missed the podium as Yulia Galysheva (Kazakhstan) was second with 23.96 points, while Canada’s Maxime DuFour-Lapointe was third with 23.74 points.
DuFour-Lapointe’s complete was the best of her vocation. The 24-year-old’s two junior sisters have currently trained for the Canadian Olympic group, and this places her in a really good position to connect them when the group is named on Jan. 20. “This is decisively helping me a lot in that direction,” she said. “It’s strange to state, but I’m not really feeling forced. I’m just doing what I’ve taught for, and now it’s giving off.” DuFour-Lapointe said being part of such a deep team is an respect. “I’m so pleased of being part of group Canada — just because it’s hard,” she said. “You need to be on top of your game and hold impelling yourself, and that is what is large about our team. We all desire to be large. And we always hold pushing our limits.”
Bilodeau, who was the first Canadian to win an Olympic gold medal on Canadian soil in the Vancouver games four years before, won Saturday with 24.62 points. He bordered his junior teammate and World Cup leader, Mikael Kingsbury, who tallied 24.55, while Russia’s Alexandr Smyshlyaev tallied 23.80 points to profit from bronze. “After Vancouver, I thought about it, but I was like, ‘I’m still young,’ and I liked to try to win two gold medals,” he said. “I’ve done everything in my power to be prepared for these Olympics. And after that we’ll have other goals in life. But it’s been an amazing journey.”
Credit goes to : Amy Donaldson, Deseret News