Gerrits Nails Silver

Travis Gerrits jumped his way to a silver medal in front of a large Canadian crowd in warm conditions at today’s FIS World Cup Aerials event here in Quebec’s Lanaudière region.

It was the first World Cup podium for Milton’s 21 year old, who scored 114.61 in the super final round. Belarus’s Dmitri Dashinski took Gold at 120.24 and China’s Hang Zhou placed third scoring 100.45.

After suffering a knee injury last January that curtailed his 2012 season, Gerrits couldn’t contain his excitement at the finish, “I’m kind of on top of the world. I couldn’t be happier.

To come back from my injury last season and to stomp my jumps here, it’s just awesome.”
Gerrits, who was ninth in China last week, added that he still isn’t up to the full degree of difficulty (DD) he hopes to compete this season. He competed a full, full, full (triple twisting triple back flip) in the finals but plans to add another twist by next week’s competition in Lake Placid.

“The full, full, full was the only jump I had left in my arsenal before I start doing bigger jumps next week in Placid. So to podium here with a lower DD means my coaches and I are doing all the right things technically, we’re taking it slow which is the right thing to do with my training,” said Gerrits.
Canadians Olivier Rochon from Gatineau, Que. and Jean-Christophe André of Montreal advanced to the 12-man finals but failed to qualify for the four-man super final.
Rochon was third (last week) landed in eighth with a score of 99.12.
André also fell on his final jump and ended up in 11th position with a score of 83.43 after qualifying seventh. He too is looking forward to upping his degree of difficulty next week.

The only other Canadian in the competition was rookie Dave Blais of Lac Beauport, who finished 22^nd with a score of 81.78 in the qualification round.

On the women’s side China’s Mengtao Xu was first at 104.5; Lydia Lassila (Australia) took silver scoring 95.52 and Yu Yang (China) placed third at 91.29.

The only Canadian woman in the event was Sabrina Guérin of Laval, who fell on her qualifications jump, finishing 18th scoring 48.82.

She acknowledged that after a week of excellent training, perhaps the hometown pressure got to her, “I think I felt a lot of the pressure from being at home and being the only girl competing for Canada. I went forward on the jump and I bent my knees and I tried to save the landing and

it didn’t really work and I finally crashed at the bottom.”