Team BC Alumni, Kelsey Serwa, Wins World Championship Ski Cross Title
Feb. 5 2011
On a day of chills, spectacular spills and great thrills at the 2011 Freestyle World Championships in Deer Valley, Utah, Kesley Serwa (Team BC 2007 Canada Winter Games) of Kelowna, B.C., and Chris Del Bosco, a Vail, Colo., native with dual citizenship, won gold medals. Julia Murray of Whistler, B.C., added a silver medal in the women’s event.
“It was a pretty incredible day,” Canadian head coach Eric Archer said on a conference call. “Seeing Kelsey come out of bed and do what she did today, Jules finally waking up this season and skiing like
Kelowna's Kelsey Serwa, Photographed by: Handout Photo, PNG Files
she was last year . . . and Chris Del Bosco, he was on a mission from the beginning.”
Serwa bruised her ribs, back and butt and suffered neck whiplash in her sensational finish-line crash last Sunday in winning the X Games gold medal. She ski
pped the two days of training in Deer Valley and underwent four hours a day of physio and massage.
Remarkably, she qualified fourth-fastest on Thursday — her best qualification of the season — advanced out of her four-skier quarter-final despite
being last through the first couple of corners and won the final after leading wire-to-wire.
“After my crash, I didn’t know if it would be possible any more,” she said of challenging for a world championship medal. “I had a hard time getting out of bed and just moving in general. Now, I’m super stoked. I feel great.”
Serwa said rumours had been circulating in Deer Valley that she was too injured to compete. In fact, she said U.S. men’s skier Casey Puckett told her: “I heard you broke your back, I heard you broke your leg.”
Murray was third out of the start gate, just behind Anna Holmlund, but snuck inside the Swede on the first big right-hand turn.
Murray, who has torn meniscus and cartilage damage in her knee, said she couldn’t really answer when asked why she suddenly found her form.
“It’s a surprise to me even that I got a podium today,” she said. “I know I have it in me, but my knee is really sore and we talked before the race about going home afterwards and getting a scope to clean things up. That doesn’t do too much for the confidence, but I popped a lot of Tylenol and pushed through it.
“I just tried to put it out of my mind and tell myself I’m as good as these girls even with an injury.”
Canada’s best female ski cross racer, Ashleigh McIvor of Whistler, the 2009 world champion and 2010 Olympic gold medallist, missed the world championships after tearing a knee ligament in training at the X Games.
Del Bosco, who was the fastest qualifier as 32 men headed to Friday’s heat racing, won his opening round and quarter-final heat and was second in the semifinals. The top two racers from each heat advance.
In the final, he was squeezed into second by half a ski length by Mario Matt in the first corner, but he made a gutsy pass of the Austrian in the third corner and then held off the challenge of a Finnish skier at the end to earn the win.
Del Bosco, who was second by a quarter of a ski length to John Teller of U.S. at the X Games, was a heartbreaking fourth at the Olympics, when he crashed off the huge final jump.
He said watching Serwa and Murray do so well was a big boost.“We were in the start … and we got the call they went 1-2,” Del Bosco said. “That was huge. Then I didn’t want to let anyone down.”Davey Barr of Whistler was seventh and Nik Zoricic of Toronto eighth.
There were a handful of crashes in the heat racing, none more spectacular than the women’s first quarter-final, where Ophelie David of France lost a ski heading into the first corner. It set off a chain reaction that sent all four skiers sprawling, with Heidi Zacher of Germany doing a swan dive-like somersault.
Article Source: Vancouver Sun & Team BC
ORIGINALLY POSTED BY: Judy Joseph-Black
