Canadian John Kucera took the first start number in the Bombardier Lake Louise Winterstart super G to the house Sunday then sat back and watched the top-30 super G skiers in the world try to better his time. None did.

LAKE LOUISE, Alberta, Canada — Canadian John Kucera took the first start number in the Bombardier Lake Louise Winterstart super G to the house Sunday then sat back and watched the top super G skiers in the world try to better his time. None did.
    “It’s an amazing feeling,” he said. “My dream race was to win on home soil, to be able to share the success with friends and family.”
    The 22-year-old Calgarian had no shortage of supporters, most of them getting progressively louder as one by one the world’s skiing stars fell short of his time of 1 minunte, 29.70 seconds.
    On a day when weather and snow conditions played a key role, Atomic swept the top six spots for all skis, boots, bindings.
    The closest a real star came to the podium was Hermann Maier in fourth. Austrian Mario Scheiber, after sitting out last season to injury, put the biggest scare in the crowd, finishing just six-hundredths behind Kucera. Swede Patrik Jaerbyn, at 37 a relic on the racing tour, notched his second career podium in third, more than a quarter-second behind. The rest of the field was three-quarters of a second back.
    Kucera said he focused on the basics. The team was nervous about the ski preparation as the weather had turned bitterly cold, but he said, “I knew the line was good and that if I could charge, good things would happen.”
    Real good things. Together with a second-place finish in the downhill a day previous from teammate Manuel Osborne-Paradis, the weekend marked the type of turning point Ken Read’s Crazy Canucks felt in 1975. The win was the first in super G for a Canadian male in 18 years. No Canadian had ever won a World Cup on the Lake Louise track. It was also the first win for head coach Paul Kristofic and new speed coach Lionel Finance. “It is what I think every coach wants to achieve,” said Kristofic. “My first win. I couldn’t be happier than it happens here at Lake Louise … and that it happens with an up and coming skier like Kucera.”
    It is a young team and it is showing some spunk. Eric Guay was seventh and two additional teammates got points, Stefan Guay for the first time and Jan Hudec for the sixth. It speaks well for the next Olympics, which the team will host.
    “We’ve got great depth right now,” said Kucera. “The season is young. There is a long season to come and you should expect good results from everybody.”
    Things did not look so bright for the U.S. team. Bode Miller, who won at Lake Louise in 2004, registered the best American result of the day in 14th. Steven Nyman finished 20th.
    Kucera skied an aggressive line on the upper middle portion of the 1½-mile run. Temperatures plunged to minus-24 Celsius (minus-11 F), but snow fell throughout the race and the course did not get faster for the skiers that followed. Kucera dedicated his victory to Jason Lapierre, his friend who died at 34 this summer after being hit by a car while biking.
    ''I did it for him,'' Kucera said. ''I wish he was here.''
    Kucera said he would not be able to celebrate much, as he had to catch a 6 a.m. flight for the next test, at Beaver Creek, Colorado. And he not only had no plans for the prize money, he didn’t know how much it was. Maybe he’ll move out of his parents' house. But he did have a use for the vehicle GMC Canada will give him the use of for a year for the win. “I’ll probably take a truck of some sort,” he said. “Right now I’m driving an ’86 piece of junk with 300,000 kilometers on it that I bought for 400 dollars two years ago.”
    After sweeping both the Lake Louise downhill and super G in 2004, Miller settled for 29th and 14th in the two same events this year. “I trained a little differently this summer,” said Miller, explaining his slow start to the season, “but I was for sure expecting more from those races.”
    “Generally I have had a good start but I'm satisfied with the way I've been preparing this season and hope for better results later in the season.”
    Miller was timed in 1:31.03 with Nyman, the only other U.S. skier to break into the top 30, finishing in 1:31.26 in the bitter cold.
    "It was chilly out there, but not too bad. It was definitely colder on the racers than coaches standing on the hill," speed head coach Chris Brigham said. "And it's supposed to go down to minus-30 [C — about minus-22 F] tomorrow as the women come in [for two DHs and a super G].
    "We've certainly learned through the years this isn't a hard hill, but it is hard to ski fast … and it's very unforgiving. Make one little mistake and you can lose a lot of time, and that means guys get packed in there — 10, 12 guys within three-tenths of a second … small mistakes can really hurt you here.
    "Bode skied well both days but he also had some troubles, too. And Steven [Nyman, who had the fastest training time Thursday and led the U.S. men Saturday, finishing in a tie for 17th] skied great all week. But they were both very fast and very competitive in some sections …"
    The men's World Cup now shifts to Beaver Creek for a series of four races starting Thursday. Maier seems ready to bounce back and fight for more wins on his beloved Birds of Prey course on which he has so often excelled.
    “I was hoping for more today because this has been so often a good course for me and I want to regain the super G World Cup title, but I guess I have to be happy with this,” he said. “This weekend was not so bad considering my poor health coming here and the lack of training in past weeks. I spent five days on the coast in California to get rid of my sinusitis and it was a good choice on a long term. The season is long and it will be important to save some energy for the big races.”

—  Patrick Lang contributed to this report

Lake Louise men's World Cup super G results

Did not finish 1st run: BANK Ondrej (CZE), SULLIVAN Marco (USA), EISATH Florian (ITA), MACARTNEY Scott (USA), GRUGGER Hans (AUT)

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THE SCOOP
By Hank McKee

Equipment

Men’s SG, Lake Louise, Alberta, Nov. 26, 2006
Skier, skis/boots/bindings
1 Kucera, Atomic/Atomic/Atomic
2 Scheiber, Atomic/Atomic/Atomic
3 Jaerbyn, Atomic/Atomic/Atomic
4 Maier, Atomic/Atomic/Atomic
5 Deneriaz, Atomic/Atomic/Atomic
6 Guay, Atomic/Atomic/Atomic
7 Defago, Rossignol/Lange/Rossignol
8 Kernen, Rossignol/Rossignol/Rossignol
9 Cuche, Head/Head/Tyrolia
10 Raich, Atomic/Atomic/Atomic

Men’s Super G, Lake Louise, Alberta, Nov. 26, 2006. … It is the third race of the men’s 38-event 2006-07 World Cup schedule. … The first of six scheduled super G’s. … It is the 20th super G held at Lake Louise. … the eighth for men.
    It is the first career victory for John Kucera, his first podium. … His first top 10. … His previous best had been 12th in combined at Wengen on Jan. 14, 2005. … He was 14th in the downhill at Lake Louise the previous day and is now second on the World Cup overall standings list behind Benjamin Raich. … The last Canadian male to win a World Cup super G was Felix Belcyzk at Leukerbad on Jan. 25, 1988. … No Canadian had ever won at Lake Louise previously. … Canadians had not placed better than first and second (Manuel Osborne-Paradis was second in the DH Nov. 25) on consecutive days since Todd Brooker and Laurie Graham won at Aspen and Mont Tremblant respectively March 6 and 5 in 1983.
    Second matches Mario Scheiber’s career-best placing in World Cup, and it is his best SG result ever. … He has also placed second in DH at Garmisch and Kvitfjell in 2005. … His previous best at Lake Louise was in SG Nov. 28, 2004. … It is his fourth career podium.
    It is the second career podium for Patrik Jaerbyn, the other a second-place finish in SG at Kvitfjell March 8, 1998. … His top six results have all come in SG dating back to 1993. … His best previous result at Lake Louise had been eighth Nov. 30, 2003. … It is the best placing in SG for a Swedish male since Fredrik Nyberg won at Beaver Creek Dec. 3, 2000.
    It is the fifth time Erik Guay has placed sixth in a World Cup race and it matches his sixth-best career result. … He has also been second in DH at Lake Louise, Nov. 29, 2004, and in super G at Beaver Creek and Val Gardena in December 2005. … He has more top-six SG results (6) than any other Canadian man. … Fourteenth place is the 14th-best SG result for Bode Miller. … It is his third best at Lake Louise, having won the race in 2004 (Nov. 29) and placing seventh Dec. 1, 2002. … Twentieth is the third career scoring result in SG for Steven Nyman, the other two an 18th at Val Gardena Dec. 16, 2005, and a 25th at Beaver Cree
k Dec. 1, 2005. … It is the first career scoring result for Stefan Guay. … The 21-year-old holds three World Junior Championships medals… none of them in SG. … It is the sixth career scoring result for Jan Hudec, the fourth at Lake Louise dating back to November 2003. … Two of the five DNFs for the race were U.S. skiers.