Win Might Be Just The Tonic For Britt Janyk

PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE STAR

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A skier who hopes to win big at home come the Winter Games in February got a small victory about as far away from home as she can get today.

The wins can never come too early when you’re battling to get your confidence back. So Canadian alpine skier Britt Janyk’s victory in a women’s super giant slalom in New Zealand is a good step forward in this Olympic campaign.

Sure, the only other competitive ski nation at Winter Games NZ were the Swedes – their ace Anja Paerson didn’t finish the race.

PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES

Britt Janyk tastes victory again.

But after a World Cup season when Janyk didn’t manage a top-10 finish, the Whistler skier will take what she can get.

The progress of Canada’s Speed Queens – made up of Janyk, Emily Brydon and Kelly VanderBeek -- will be important leading to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. They need to establish they’re back in the game.

After finishing on the podium every weekend of speed racing but one in the 2007-08 World Cup season, they were shut out last year, the best result being a fifth by Brydon in a downhill in Austria.

No one plummeted more than Janyk, who after placing third in the downhill standings the year before and saying she was aiming to win the Crystal Globe in the event, couldn’t manage a top-10 finish and was 26th overall.

The 2007-08 season wasn’t a fluke with one or two good results. She was in the top-10 in all eight downhills, winning one and finishing third in another. The talent is definitely there.

Janyk admitted at the end of the season that a big factor was that “my head just wasn’t there.”

Hopefully, this is an early sign that her head is back into it. This will certainly make things more pleasant because as she said in an interview when we visited the team earlier this summer: “If you’re winning and doing well, it’s easy to have fun and it’s easy to be enjoying it.”

TOUGH TO BEAT: Not like he needed any more confidence, but American snowboard kingpin Shaun White dusted off the competition to win a World Cup snowboard event in Cardrona, New Zealand.

Oliver Kraus, who follows the tour for the International Ski Federation, writes that the defending Olympic champion started with a “Lien Air”, followed by “Backside 900” and “Frontside 720” before cappinghis performance with a “Cab Double Cork 1080” and a final “Frontside 1080.” We'll take his word for it.

Pronounced White: “I think that Double Corks are the future of the sport.”

Hard to argue with the guy.  You can check out a Double Cork here on YouTube.

Brad Martin of Ancaster, Ont., was sixth in the men’s final, while Mercedes Nicoll of Whistler was eighth in the women’s, won by defending world champion Jiayu Liu of China.