Starting a stretch of races with a bleeding face and black eye would be enough to turn off many people. But Whistler’s Marielle Thompson kept calm and carried on in last week’s NorAm Cup ski cross races in Sugar Bowl, Calif., despite a dramatic crash in the first day of training.

The next day (Feb. 2), Thompson and her female teammates with the Whistler-based B.C. ski cross program lined up on a Cypress-like course, with big jumps and plenty of speed, against World Cup hotshots such as top-ranked Ophelie David of France.

“I’ve always kind of been good at getting back up and keeping going. I just kind of pulled myself together and went back up,” Thompson said.

Swiss World Cup racer Fanny Smith scored a victory over David in that event, with the French star settling for second ahead of teammate Marion Josserand in third. Whistler’s Catriona Blair captured fourth place after earning a spot in the big final, while Danielle Willhoeft and a tired Thompson ended up sixth and seventh behind Australia’s Brooke Dunleavy.

Thompson regrouped on the second day of racing to qualify in second place behind Smith, and went on to finish just behind the World Cup racer in the big final. Blair sailed through a head-to-head heat and wound up finishing third in the big final, followed by Willhoeft.

“I was getting pretty close (to the Olympic-bound Smith), which was good,” Thompson said.

The French racers missed the second event after departing to conserve themselves for the upcoming Olympic races, but Thompson said she had a chance to learn from watching the smooth and speedy David.

“It was kind of intimidating starting with her, but it was really good watching her on the course, to see how she moves and how she jumps,” Thompson said.

On the men’s side in the NorAm races, Whistler’s Sven Winter charged to a ninth-place finish in the first day of racing against a very strong field, followed by Nicholas Geddes in 10th, Rob Lepine in 14th and Frazer McGaw in 16th. Stan Rey, who joined the group for these events, finished fourth on the first day and second in the Feb. 3 race.

Winter sprang up the standings into fourth in the second race, while Lepine moved up into seventh and Geddes and McGaw followed in 10th and 12th, respectively.

Going into the NorAm races, Thompson said, “My goal was to get on the podium, so I was a bit disappointed that first day.” But she wasn’t feeling 100 per cent after her crash with her confidence a bit shaken, and knowing the level of competition at the event, she was primarily aiming to do her best.

“There was some tough competition, that’s for sure,” Thompson said, adding that she took confidence from the fact that her qualifying time in the second race was only about a second slower than Smith’s. “It was really cool knowing I was that close.”

A second-year member of the B.C. ski cross team, Thompson said she has been concentrating on improving her skiing this season, trying to stay more solid over the jumps that make ski cross courses so interesting, as well as working on maintaining her focus and trying to create more speed as she skis through the courses.

Though the World Cup racers posed a strong challenge, the women’s field at the NorAm events was small — with seven racers on the first day, and five on the second — as the B.C. team is one of the few grassroots programs around. Thompson said it’s a bit strange being some of the only young racers around the national-team elites, but they’re seeing more young alpine racers making the switch to ski cross.

Meanwhile, the growing B.C. team boasts a close-knit group that Thompson says has become like a family.

“I’d say we’re more of a team this year than last year. The program’s developing more,” she said, adding that the athletes have good role models and coaches in Whistler’s Drew Hetherington and Hal Gunby.

There’s a chance the B.C. racers could be forerunners on the course when their sport makes its Olympic debut at Cypress Mountain on Feb. 21 and 23, an honour that has Thompson excited at the prospect.

Murray mending well

Whistler’s Julia Murray, who heads into the Olympics as the fourth-ranked woman on the World Cup ski cross circuit, is on track to take up her Olympic berth after a good session with orthopedic surgeon Bob McCormack in Vancouver, mom Stephanie Sloan reported in a blog post last week for CBC.

After successful work on her injured knee, Murray can now “extend and flex her knee through a full range of motion… She can now ‘kick herself in the butt’ right onto the podium,” Sloan wrote.

Murray carried the Olympic torch on a snowmobile in front of thousands of people packed into Whistler’s Skiers Plaza on Friday (Feb. 5), and passed the flame to her father’s former Crazy Canuck teammate Steve Podborski. She then went to Vancouver to continue rehabilitation efforts with her physiotherapist, Sloan reported.