Bienvenue à France, the land of rugged, steep mountains, stinky cheese, and awesome ski cross courses.

Our first stop in France took us to Les Contamines. Towered by Mount Blanc, Les Contamines is a small ski town just past St. Gervais and only thirty minutes from Chamonix.

With the disappointing results that came in the previous races, I was stoked to have qualified in 4th position. This means that I would have lane choice right up until the finals…if I had made it that far. My first heat was a breeze; I was first out of the gate and lead the entire way down. The other girls in my heat didn’t have any chance of catching me. Quarters came and once again I had the advantage of lane choice. This time my start wasn’t so bang on and I ended up barging, anticipating the gate drop to come a lot sooner than it did. I managed to stay with the other girls up to the second roller in the course. Here, we all merged and got tangled in the air. I ended up falling down and missed the next gate while the other girls continued down the course. Hoping a couple of them would get tangled up again later in the course I hiked up as fast as I could and proceeded to finish the run. Unfortunately everyone in front on my finished the course and I was bumped out of the race.

Because of my qualification ranking I finished 9th. This is so far my best result this year but that’s going to change for the next race. I’m just going to go out there and have fun, more like I did all of last year. It’ll come.

On a more positive note the rest of the Canadians killed it. On the women’s side Ashleigh McIvor and Julia Murray finished 1st and 2nd while on the men’s side Stanley Hayer almost won his first World Cup race but got squeezed out in the last 100m to finish 2nd.