Camplin, Omischl fly to victories in second Lake Placid aerials event

Camplin, Omischl fly to victories in second Lake Placid aerials event{mosimage}Australian Alisa Camplin, about as unassuming a lass as one could meet, is the defending World Cup aerials champion. At Lake Placid, New York, on Sunday, she put herself firmly in position to repeat with an impressive win off the Intervale complex aerial jumps.

Canadian Steve Omischl, Camplin's significant other, likewise put himself well in front of the aerial field with his fourth win of the season. It took a potent score of 246.42 and nerves steady enough to hold off a staunch challenge from Belarussian Alexei Grichin.

All in all, even if you don't count Omischl as an unofficial "teammate," the Australians had a great outing. Lydia Ierodiaconou picked up second behind Camplin and Elizabeth Gardner nearly made it a medal position sweep, but got knocked off the third step by Belarussian Assol Slivets.

Grichin prevented Canada from going one-two in the men's event as Ryan Blais posted a career-best 245.13 score, which was good for third place, and represented a higher point total than he got when he scored his only World Cup win, at Lake Placid, 364 days ago.

Joe Pack led all U.S. finishers with in fourth place. Kate Reed was sixth in the women's field and Kelly Hilliman seventh. Ryan St. Onge in eighth and Jeret Peterson in 11th helped the U.S. squad recover from a Friday event at Placid where no Americans qualified for the final 12 positions.

Camplin, too, had trouble that day, crashing out and missing the finals. "On Friday we had really freezing temperatures, high swirling winds and then a downpour of snow, so it was very tough," Camplin said. "The coaches had a difficult job getting the speeds right … but they must have got it right today, because the whole team did well."

While the U.S. results weren't anything to open the champagne over, it was an improvement. "We had a couple of talks," said aerials coach Matt Christiansen, "and we made the point that we're here to get some business done. … Friday was unacceptable. I think everybody got the point."

Freestyle World Cup
Lake Placid, New York
January 18, 2004
Women's Aerials
1. Alisa Camplin, AUS 192.76
2. Lydia Ierodiaconou, AUS 187.08
3. Assol Slivets, BLR 171.03
4. Elizabeth Gardner, AUS 168.14
5. Anna Zukal, RUS 164.17
6. Kate Reed, USA 162.06
7. Kelly Hilliman, USA 156.66
8. Anna Belikh, RUS 156.65
9. Shaung Cheng, CHN 155.74
10. Jiao Wang, CHN 152.81
11. Shaungfei Dai, CHN 147.67
12. Nina Li, CHN 129.22
In qualification:
13. Christina Craddock, USA 79.06
14. Trudy McIntosh, AUS 78.44
15. Xin Xin Guo, CHN 77.80
16. Veronika Bauer, CAN 72.59
17. Amber Peterson, CAN 72.29
18. Deidra Dionne, CAN 72.24
19. Sharlee Strebel, USA 71.10
20. Olga Koroleva, RUS 71.03
21. Kayo Henmi, JPN 52.78
22. Lainie Cole, AUS 49.44
23. Manuela Mueller, SUI 42.99

Men's Aerials
1. Steve Omischl, CAN 246.42
2. Alexei Grichin, BLR 246.05
3. Ryan Blais, CAN 245.13
4. Joe Pack, USA 242.29
5. Dmitri Dashinski, BLR 231.79
6. Sen Qiu, CHN 231.61
7. Dmitri Arkhipov, RUS 231.17
8. Ryan StOnge, USA 225.39
9. Christian Rijavec, AUT 218.70
10. Ales Valenta, CZE 216.27
11. Jeret Peterson, USA 210.25
12. Vladimir Lebedev, RUS 116.76
In qualification:
13. Jeff Bean, CAN 115.92
14. Kyle Nissen, CAN 113.03
15. Christian Kaufmann, SUI 112.59
16. Stanislav Kravchuk, UKR 104.35
17. Denis Osipov, BLR 102.60
18. Aurelien Lohrer, FRA 100.32
18. Anton Kushnir, CZE 100.32
20. Xiaopeng Han, CHN 98.91
21. Evgeniy Brailovskiy, UZB 97.47
22. Timofei Slivets, BLR 95.76
23. Yuriy Zukal, RUS 95.17
23. Enver Ablaev, UKR 95.17
25. Warren Shouldice, CAN 94.50
26. Martin Walti, SUI 93.89
27. Andreas Isoz, SUI 91.32
28. Thomas Lambert, SUI 88.27
29. Renato Ulrich, SUI 86.97
30. Ken Mizuno, JPN 85.05
Other North Americans:
31. Matt Saunders, USA 83.37
32. Cord Spero, CAN 76.54