Team USA delivers going into third day of 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Going into the third scheduled day of competition at the IPC Alpine World Championships in La Molina, Spain yesterday, the United States para-alpine team has delivered with a gold medal won by Laurie Stephens in the women's sitting downhill, a silver medal won by men's sit skier Stephen Lawler in the downhill, and bronze medal won by Laurie Stephens in the women's sitting Super-G. The United States finished two days of competition fifth overall in the medal count, tied with Russia.

Other Team USA performances in the downhill included a fourth place finish by visually impaired woman skier Danelle Umstead and guide Robert Umstead, a fifth place finish by Christopher Devlin-Young in the men's sitting group, an eighth place finish by Ralph Green in the men's standing group, an eighth place finish by women's standing skier Allison Jones, a ninth place finish by visually impaired Mark Bathum and guide Sean Ramsden, a tenth place finish by Tyler Walker in the men's sitting, and a thirteenth place finish by Heath Calhoun in the men's sitting.

In the Super-G event on Thursday, Jones finished fourth in the women's standing group, Devlin-Young finished fifth, Stephani Victor finished fourth in the women's sitting group, Umstead and Umstead finished fifth in their group, Bathum and Ramsden finished seventh in their group, Walker finished twelfth in his group, Green finished sixteenth in the men's standing, Jonathan Lujan finished nineteenth in the men's standing, Stephen Lawler finished twentieth in the men's sitting, Heath Calhoun finished twenty-third in men's sitting, and Andrew Earl Kurka finished twenty-fifth in the men's sitting group.

A few members of Team USA had difficulties, and were not able to start or finish their races. In the men's sitting downhill, Kurka did not finish. In the downhill and Super-G event, 2010 Winter Paralympics medalist Alana Nichols did not start. LW12-2 women's sit-skier Victor also did not start in the downhill event.

Visually-impaired B3 classified skier Bathum chatted with his guide, Sean Ramsden, immediately following both his races. While he was unhappy with his downhill run, Bathum was happy with and had fun during his seventh place run in the Super-G event where he finished with a factored time of 1:13.51, only 3.02 seconds slower than the winning time set by Spanish skier Jon Santacana.

United States skiers were scheduled to compete yesterday in the Slalom discipline but the competition was cancelled due to high winds. Several members of Team USA had a pizza party after the slalom cancellation. Friday's scheduled event had been rescheduled as a result of predicted snow and high winds during the day. No snow arrived until late in the afternoon, where there was limited accumulation. Some of the younger members of Team USA took advantage of the night off on Thursday to go bowling before a busy training day Friday.

In other United States Paralympic news, Sir Philip Craven, the President of the International Paralympic Committee, told a Wikinews reporter the country will have live television coverage of the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When a member of Team USA competing in La Molina was asked if they heard confirmation of this, they were unable to confirm. They did highlight the lack of United States media coverage was frustrating for fans wanting to follow the Games in London. According to the skier, many people he knew could only follow the Games by searching for video on sites like YouTube.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Related news

"Austria leads medal count after second day of 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships" — Wikinews, February 22, 2013
"Second day at IPC Para-alpine World Championships at La Molina delivers surprises" — Wikinews, February 22, 2013
"IPC Alpine World Championship reschedules Super-G owing to weather" — Wikinews, February 21, 2012
"Spain starts 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships with first and fifth place finishes" — Wikinews, February 20, 2013
"Spaniard Jon Santacana wins downhill at 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships" — Wikinews, February 20, 2013
"Slovak Henrieta Farkašová wins downhill event at 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships" — Wikinews, February 20, 2013

Sources

Wikinews

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

Wikinews

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License