Marielle Thompson leads 1-2 finish for Canada in women’s ski cross

SOCHI, Russia -- Marielle Thompson and Kelsey Serwa finished 1-2 for Canada in women’s ski cross on Friday, giving their country bookend gold-silver performances in Olympic freestyle skiing.

Freestyle opened Feb. 8 with sisters Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe of Montreal finishing 1-2 in moguls.

This marked Thompson’s third and biggest win of the season.

The final pitted the four fastest women in qualifying. Thompson, ranked third, took an early lead against the Serwa, who was ranked first, and never let it slip.

Ophelie David of France wiped out about two-thirds of the way down the course, which gave the bronze to Sweden’s Anna Holmlund.

Once again, women’s ski cross offered its fair share of accidents that could ignite a discussion over whether the Olympic course is built too big for the women.

In back-to-back quarterfinals, Anna Woerner of Germany and Stephanie Joffroy of Chile were taken off the course on stretchers after scary accidents. No updates were immediately provided. Joffroy waved to the crowd at the bottom and Woerner could be seen covering her face with her hands.

Their wrecks were jarring reminders of the dangers of this sport that were amplified when Russian skicross racer Maria Komissarova fractured her spine in training last weekend. She had emergency surgery at a hospital in the mountains and was later taken to Munich for another operation.

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