Though a painful pulled groin muscle is causing problems for Edmonton’s Viviane Forest, the visually impaired ski racer managed to grit her teeth and win a bronze medal in Tuesday’s (March 16) giant slalom race on the Whistler Creekside course.

Guided by Whistler’s Lindsay Debou, Forest dug deep to finish her second race of the 2010 Paralympic Games after a fall near the end of her first run aggravated her injury, leaving her feeling a lot of pain and sitting in fourth place. Treatment from Canadian team physiotherapists helped her recover enough to tackle her second run.

Finishing the two-run race in third, behind Slovakia’s Henrieta Farkasova and Austria’s Sabine Gasteiger, gave Forest her second medal of the 2010 Games and a major personal victory in overcoming a lot of pain.

“It was definitely a challenge today. My second run was really difficult, but I made my way down and I am just really happy. This bronze medal feels like gold for me and I’m so happy with what I did today,” said Forest, who has four per cent vision.

She and Debou, the former Whistler Mountain Ski Club racer, have achieved a lot of success together so far in their partnership, and Forest set her sights high for these Games after winning that first 2010 alpine medal in Whistler, a silver in Sunday’s (March 14) slalom.

“My expectations are pretty high. I would like to have at least one gold medal from these Games, and probably podium every event, if I stay on my skis. That’s always the bottom line,” Forest said on Sunday.

Germany’s Martin Braxenthaler, the top-ranked sit-skier on the World Cup circuit this season, also earned his second medal of these Games –—and his ninth Paralympic gold medal in alpine skiing — by topping the men’s sitting category in the giant slalom, while U.S. sit-skier Alana Nichols won the women’s event.

Canada’s Chris Williamson, a three-time Paralympic medallist including his 2002 slalom gold, suffered a heartbreaking near-miss in the men’s visually impaired giant slalom race, as he and guide Nick Brush of Panorama finished just four tenths of a second out of a medal spot.

That followed what Williamson called a “bad day all around” in Sunday’s slalom race, where Williamson struggled in his first run and somehow just didn’t ski up to his usual standards.

“I’m going to try to put these two races behind me. I qualified pretty well in downhill training so I’m going to build on that and hopefully we can go from there,” Williamson said on Tuesday.

Slovakia’s Jakub Krako claimed the giant slalom gold in Williamson’s category.