James Crawford: Surprise World Championships super-G gold medal win ‘surreal’ and ‘unbelievable’

James Crawford described winning gold in the men’s super-G at the Alpine Ski World Championships as “surreal” and “unbelievable”.

Competing against a number of big names including Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Marco Odermatt, the Canadian posted the fastest time, narrowly beating Kilde by a hundredth of a second.

The victory was Crawford’s first at a world championships and secured his first medal from the event.

“It feels pretty surreal to now be kind of etched into the history books as another Canadian that is world champion,” he told Eurosport afterwards. “And honestly, the biggest thing is I’ve been searching to win a race for the last two years and I just haven’t really quite been able to do it.

“And today I managed to do it at a world championships which just makes it a little bit sweeter and it’s unbelievable.”

Crawford’s best performance so far this season was a second-place finish in the downhill in Bormio in December and he currently sits 12th in this year’s World Cup standings.

However, the 25-year-old feels that he was able to confound expectations due to the fact he wasn’t under pressure arriving in France.

“Coming into a world champs I think it’s really easy to put a lot of pressure on yourself because you have one opportunity,” he said. “And I think with where my skiing was at and how I was feeling, the pressure wasn’t there.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t believe I couldn’t win but it wasn’t on my mind. And so today I went out and I really just trusted my skiing, and a lot of the time that’s enough and I’m really happy that I managed to do that and for it to be enough.”

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