Meryeta O'Dine crashed and burned her chance of winning in the big final on Saturday.
Despite a bruised shoulder which offered painful reminders of how unforgiving the ice-hard surface of the Noram snowboardcross run at Tabor Mountain can be, O'Dine picked up right where she left off.
The 18-year-old from Prince George returned to her home hill Sunday and was the top qualifier again, just like she was for Saturday's eliminations. In Sunday's big final medal-podium dash, she was right on the heels of defending Noram champion Rosie Mancuri of Anchorage, Alaska in a tight four-rider race, but came up a bit short and finished second.
"That was a really close finish," said O'Dine. "I'm pretty excited (to finish second and fourth) but there was a crazy fall (Saturday). Today there were opportunities to pass, but Rosie is a good racer. I didn't have a super-great start and I went for a couple passes but she kept me behind her. We were all within board lengths of each other at the finish."
Anna Miller of Orem, Utah was third and Taylor Wilton of Collingwood, Ont. was fourth. Carle Brennaman of Comox, who won the big final Saturday, captured the small final on Sunday.
"Everybody was riding really well today, I think that was probably the best finals race I've ever been in, Meryeta and Anna were both right on me," said Mancuri, who trains at Steamboat Springs, Colo. "I had to take very aggressive lines to keep the lead and hold them off. The course is challenging everybody a lot and pushing everybody's limits."
Taking on some of the world best young snowboardcrossers in the NorAm event was a learning experience for O'Dine, who won Canada Games gold about a year ago at Tabor. The mental preparation it takes to do well racing in an extreme sport such as snowboardcross is much different at home, where she sees familiar faces all over the hill, unlike her previous races on the Noram, Europa Cup and World Cup circuits in South America, Europe and the United States, where she can easily duck the distractions to find her racing focus.
The international field, with nine countries represented, brought an exotic touch to Tabor and O'Dine was proud of what her parents Virginia O'Dine and Fern Thibault have accomplished to make city's closest ski resort an international attraction.
"I'm so used to seeing these people in Austria and Chile and it's nice to have them all here, it's a little unreal but it's cool," said Meryeta.
In the men's big final Sunday, Cole Johnson of Squaw Valley, Calif., hung on to edge second-place Adam Dickson of Jindabyne, Australia and third-place Danny Bourgeois of Rosemare, Que., in a tight finish. Jake Vedder of Detroit, Mich., was in second most of the way and made a last-second lunge on the final jump to try to get by Johnson but crashed.
"It was a good run, a little slow at the top but I made up for it at the bottom," said Johnson. "I made a pretty good pass on Adam and Jake between Turn 4 and 5 when they went a bit high. There's a lot of good riders and a lot of good riding."
Dickson, Saturday's big final winner, knew it was going to be tight as he went right to try to slingshot past Johnson at the finish.
"It was pretty crazy, the entire bottom half is such a crucial part of the course and all the way past Turn 4 you have to be really dialed and precise with your turning and technique,"said the 20-year-old Dickson. "I love this course, I've been having so much fun with it. It's super technical and the start section its really easy to make mistakes with all those rollers. You have to go to the back side of the rollers as much as you can."
The berms of the Tabor course are built out of dirt, rather than strictly snow, and that makes for more predictable snow conditions, which the racers like. The roller-coaster rhythm sections leading into the first S-turns took their toll on a few riders, including O'Dine, but none of the riders were complaining about the course and the consensus is it's one of the best they ridden this season.
"It's a fun course, I like how the whole thing's built out of dirt, we never see that, and the berms are perfectly built," said Brooke Brewer of Detroit, who is just returning to racing after suffering a concussion. "There's challenging features, there's a little bit of everything, there's turns, jumps, places where you have to double and a technical start section."
Evan Bichon, the 2015 Canada Games men's champion, was eliminated in the quarterfinals Sunday but had a much better day on the slopes Saturday, winning the small final to finish fifth overall. The 16-year-old from Prince George is vying for a spot on the Canadian team for world championships in South Korea later this month a test event for the 2018 Olympics.
"(Saturday) went really well, I was going really fast in time trials and managed to stay in front in my heats all the way to semis and I didn't make it through there and managed to win small finals," said Bichon, who finished 14th on Sunday.
Robert Minghini of Snowshoe, West Virginia, won the men's small final Sunday.
Last week's rain showers made for fast conditions which took a few racers by surprise, leading to some bad wrecks and a few ambulance rides to the UHNBC emergency room. Sean Roley of Aron, Colo., landed hard on his back and ruptured a blood vessel in his stomach in Saturday's qualifying band spent most of the night in hospital. Michael Perle of Saddle River, N.J., who qualified first on Saturday, overshot a jump and landed on his back in the quarterfinals, and was left with hip and knee injuries. Tyler Jackson of Whitby, Ont., broke his upper arm in a crash.
Tabor will host two more NorAm races with week, on Thursday and Friday, with eliminations starting at about noon each day.
Two of the superstars of snowboardcross were at Tabor on the weekend and plan to remain in the city for this week's races. Five-time FIS World Cup Dominique Maltais of Petite-Rivires-St-Francois, Que., a two-time Olympic medalist, is on a one-year hiatus from competing and is here as coach and wax tech for Quebec riders Bourgeois and Indrik Trahan, a former national team giant slalom skier.
Malle Ricker of Vancouver, the 2010 Olympic champion and two-time Winter X Games champ, is now retired from racing but is remaining close to the national snowboardcross scene to support the coaches. Racers, officials, volunteers and recreational snowboarders were delighted to learn of their presence at the races on the weekend.
"They've won just about everything there is to win in the sport and it's motivating that they're here," said Meryeta O'Dine.
