February 4, 2007

Perfect snowboarding weather greeted athletes and fans alike at the Park City Mountain Resort as the Parallel Giant Slalom qualifiers began. The competition was fierce as 11 women from six countries and 15 men from eight countries vied for the best spot in the finals. The USA had three contenders in the ladies’ pool – Nixo Lanning, Rachel Loftus and Gracie Wildman – and three in the men’s pool – William Loftus, Jeffrey Pollock, and Greg Reger.

In the women’s pool, Lanning (# 33), came up with the best time of 109.79 seconds, with two separate runs of 52.66 and 57.13, qualifying her for the first bracket in the finals. A combined time of 116.83 (58.11, 58.72) was earned by Loftus (#34), securing the fifth bracket – while Wildman (# 41), posted a time of 141.93 (1.07.77, 1.14.16).

In the quarterfinals, Lanning advanced on top of Setsuko Hara from Japan by a mere .04 seconds, moving on to the semifinals. Loftus dropped behind Swiss star, Ledermann, who moved on to the semifinals versus Lanning. Meanwhile, Finnish snowboarder Cecilia Hanhikoski defeated Italian Marlene Tutzer by only 1.49 seconds, and Japanese Akiko Kasai crossed the finish line 10.79 seconds ahead of Canadian Dawn Jane Birley.

In the end, the final four in the women’s parallel giant slalom were Lanning (#33), Hanhikoski (#36), Ledermann (#31), and Kasai (#38). Lanning and Ledermann went head to head, but in the first run Lanning zoomed away to a win by .46 seconds, and after the second run, she was in sight of either a gold or silver medal. Hanhikoski and Kasai had a similarly close race, with Kasai coming out on top by .40 seconds. However, there was some confusion about the timing since the Finnish delegation had filed a protest with the officials. After checking and computing the time totals, it was decided that Hanhikoski, not Kasai, had indeed won the race, so on she moved to the first-second-place bracket versus Lanning.

In the first run, Hanhikoski beat Lanning by 9.80 seconds, but in the second run she was usurped when Lanning crossed the finish line cementing the gold medal. Hanhikoski received the silver medal, while Kasai and Ledermann battled it out, with Ledermann winning the bronze medal by 13.69 seconds.

In the men’s race, Japanese Noboru Harada posted the best qualifying time of 1.39.77 seconds (49.38, 50.39), earning a bye in the first round of the finals. The three Americans all qualified for the finals – Loftus (#3) with 2.02.78, Pollock (#11) with 1.44.58, and Reger (#13) with 2.04.61.

In the first round of the finals, Loftus raced with Austrian Peter Strack, who beat Loftus by .36 seconds. Pollock took on Italian Danilo Di Biase in the first run, but Di Biase did not finish the race, so Pollock advanced to the second round. Reger was slower than Austrian Anton Hartl in the first run, but came back in the second to advance to the next round, where he met Pollock.

The two Americans battled it out, but Pollock won by 7.50 seconds and moved on to the semifinals versus Swiss Stanko Pavlica, who beat Pollock by 3.66 seconds to advance to the gold/silver bracket. Pollock, the only remaining American in the pool, went to the 3rd/4th place bracket. The other two contenders, Harada and Australian Dean Hecker raced to the end to see Harada beat Hecker out by 22.93 seconds. Pollock and Hecker had a fairly close run, but in the end Pollock secured the bronze medal.

Now, all eyes were on the final two contenders. Harada and Pavlica. Harada beat Pavlica in the first run, and in the second run zoomed easily to the finish as Pavlica took a bad tumble halfway down the run. The Japanese delegation was cheering wildly and waving flags as Harada received his gold medal.