Aspen: Sweden's Paerson glad to put Lake Louise bad luck behind her

Aspen: Sweden’s Paerson glad to put Lake Louise bad luck behind her{mosimage}ASPEN, Colorado — Her goggles fogged up, she lost a ski, she burned edges, she pressed. It seemed like everything that could have gone wrong for Anja Paerson last week did.

What better way to get past her troubles than with a trip to Aspen, a place that’s been good to her before.

Confident from a solid run in the super G the day before, Paerson finished second to Spain’s Maria Jose Rienda Contreras in a World Cup giant slalom race on Saturday at Aspen Mountain.

“It was a really tough week, so coming into this week in Aspen I was very exhausted and I tried to find some new energy for this hill,” Paerson said. “It kind of worked for me a little bit.”

Paerson won her second World Cup overall title last season and was considered one of the favorites to win it again this year. But she didn’t get off to quite the start she had hoped.

Struggling with her equipment, snow texture and then her confidence, Paerson failed to earn a single point in three races at Lake Louise, Alberta, last week.

The Swedish skier had trouble with her goggles icing up in the opening race, lost her ski in the second, then found herself trying too hard in the super G to close the weekend.

“I think all the bad luck I could have had came in that week,” Paerson said. “All week, my material was doing something wrong for me and I couldn’t relax in my skiing. I just had so much bad luck up there and I couldn’t relax.”

All it took was a solid finish in Friday’s super G to get Paerson going.

Finishing 12th in that race helped Paerson put her problems at Lake Louise behind her and, perhaps more important, gave her the confidence to attack the mountain instead of hanging back. She did just that, moving from fifth on the first run to first, holding the lead until Contreras clipped her by 0.34 seconds on the final run of the day.

“Yesterday in the super-G, I was very happy with my position,” she said. “The skis didn’t make up the time as much as I wanted to, but it was something positive coming after last week. So coming into today I just wanted to try to attack everything. I didn’t have anything to lose. I was taking a lot of risks down the course and I’m very happy ending up second.”

– The Associated Press