Are: Brydon survives "craziest" slalom run

ARE, Sweden — Emily Brydon must have been saying to herself while sitting on the hotseat for much of the early going in Friday’s super combined slalom, ‘Hey, that run may have been just crazy enough to work.’
ARE, Sweden — Emily Brydon must have been saying to herself while sitting on the hot seat for much of the early going in Friday’s super combined slalom, "Hey, that run may have been just crazy enough to work."
   “I thought it was probably one of the craziest slalom courses I’d ever seen,” said Brydon, who led Canada with a 10th-place finish in the super combi despite clocking just the 28th-fastest downhill time earlier in the day. “ … But maybe because it’s so different it worked to my advantage. I really like the snow here, it’s hero snow for slalom, and I knew with an early start number I could use it to my advantage.”
    The 26-year-old Brydon was the second racer out of the gate in the slalom and took the lead from Switzerland’s Rabea Grand. Expecting to be knocked out of the lead quickly, Brydon instead held on through the next 10 racers until Austria’s Kathrin Zettel crossed the finish line. Zettel ended up fifth, while Brydon notched her fourth top-15 finish at worlds. This season is the first for the super combi format, though, which features just one run of slalom versus the historical two.
    “No, no I didn’t at all,” Brydon answered when asked if she expected to hold the race lead that long. “There are some really good slalom skiers who do well in combined, so I know what I do in slalom is not at the same level as they do, so I’m surprised.”
    For a racer more accustomed to going fast, Brydon looked pretty comfortable on her short skis. She said the course set helped. The father of eventual fourth-place finisher Sarka Zahrobska of the Czech Republic set a tricky course on the Gastrappet slope. Nine racers didn’t finish the course, including U.S. slalom ace Resi Stiegler, and four more were disqualified for missing gates, including American Lindsey Kildow and Austria’s Michaela Kirchgasser.
    “I saw the course this afternoon and I didn’t know how I was going to do it but I knew I had to do something. I really wanted to redeem myself after the morning and I think there was a lot of fire in my turns,” Brydon said. “But I really like tight courses, and I just had fun with it. I just went with it and tried to enjoy it.”
    Brydon said she was frustrated by her downhill run, adding that “in all the other combineds this year my slalom has saved me, so I was kind of hoping it would do that today.”
    “The downhill I was really upset because I felt I had a good run,” she said. “I looked at the video and there wasn’t a mistake, so I think I just tried too hard, was too aggressive on the snow.
    “It’s such aggressive snow that the harder you push on, you just grind into it. It’s a learning experience but it was tough. I know maybe I need to take it a littler easier, feel the snow like I did in the slalom.”
    Brydon will step back in the gate for Saturday’s downhill, looking to improve on her 11th-place result two years ago in Bormio.
    “The downhill I have high expectations. I know I can do really well,” she said.