Manny being Manny


Many Canadian athletes remember the excitement they felt back in the summer of 2003 when Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics. The news only brought a shrug from Manuel Osborne-Paradis.

 
Video: Birds of Prey
Check out this cool video from Jalbert Productions and the Vail Valley Foundation, organizing committee for the Birds of Prey men's World Cup races being held this week in the Colorado Rockies. This short video feature is from Jalbert Production's "The Thin Line."

Britt Janyk of Whistler, B.C., finished seventh Thursday in the final training run before the first World Cup downhill of the season. Emily Brydon of Fernie, B.C., was 13th, Shona Rubens of Canmore, Alta., finished 26th, Larisa Yurkiw of Owen Sound, Ont., finished 39th, Kelly VanderBeek of Kitchener, Ont., was 43rd, Georgia Simmerling of West Vancouver, B.C., finished 56th and Victoria Whitney of Whistler was 59th.

The top women racers in the world return to Lake Louise's Whitehorn Mountain Friday for the season-opening downhill. There is another downhill scheduled for Saturday and the first super-G of the season Sunday.

Canada's Anna Goodman was victorious in Wednesday's Nor-Am slalom race at Loveland Ski Area, Colorado. At Aspen, Austria's Marcel Hirscher edged Canada's Jean-Philippe Roy for first place Wednesday in the first of two Nor-Am GS races. American Tommy Ford came in third.

Mike Ridewood's freestyle career began 15 years ago, but not as a skier. Ridewood is the first to admit that his skiing skills are "almost non-existent." But that has never stopped him from perching himself along some of the steepest moguls courses in the world to get coveted shots of Canadian athletes in action.

Over the decade and a half that Ridewood has been photographing the national team for the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, a lot has changed. Moguls acrobatic maneuvers have progressed from twisters and cossacks to back-fulls and cork 720s, but perhaps more revolutionary for Ridewood is the evolution that's taken place inside the camera.