SNOWBOARD WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. Other than the three World Cup races of the 2011 season which have been held so far, the qualifiers for the sbx world championship’s finals scheduled for Tuesday, Jan 18th, noon, weren’t dominated by a Canadian rider but by a French girl.

Nelly Moenne Loccoz (photo: © FIS/Oliver Kraus) posted the best time securing the top qualifier result in a time of 57.83 seconds.

2007 World Champion and US-American hope for Gold, Lindsey Jacobellis followed as runner-up (58.25), already 42 hundredths behind.

2010 Olympic Silver medalist Deborah Anthonioz rounded out the top time trial result for France (58.26) as third while 2010 Europa Cup winner Eva Samkova (CZE, 58.53) was able to outperform highly valued 2010 Olympic Gold medalist Maelle Ricker (CAN, 58.66) and her team mate Dominique Maltais (59.75), the current and undisputed World Cup leader, by placing fourth.

Markus Schairer posts men's best time

What a performance of the reigning World Champion: Austria’s Markus Schairer (photo © FIS/Oliver Kraus) underlines his hope for a back-to-back Gold medal with best time in today’s World Championship snowboard cross qualifier.

“Mad Max” killed it on the 650 metres long course and its vertical drop of 120 metres with an incredible time of 53.83 seconds thus relegating the other top aspirant for the WCS title, Pierre Vaultier, to the second rank.

The Frenchman summed up a gap of more than half a second while blasting down the race course peppered with 20 different features (54.41).

Under a bluebird sky in La Molina, Luca Matteotti (ITA) came in third (54.47), Alex Pullin (AUS, 54.55) fourth.

The best ranked non-European was Nate Holland (USA, 55.22) as tenth.

FISsnowboard.com
Monday 17 January 2011

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