Do you know what a "Critter" is? Some of the GS riders at today's Snowboard FIS World Cup in Mont Sainte Anne know since they've been hangin' around with Karine Ruby since Sandra Farmand of Germany handed her a Christmas present. It's a wired, four-legged thing that looks like an old Jeep with the mind of a mosquito. It needs occasional maintenance, tweaking and sometimes a drop of oil... When Farmand and Ruby were out shopping in Whistler last week, the Frenchwoman just couldn't stop playing around with it in a shop, so Farmand bought it and gave it to Ruby just after the first run of today's race.

	Rosey Fletcher

Ruby, who had finished the first run as the fastest rider, was expected to repeat this result in the second run — especially with this new mascot in her pocket — but she ultimately had to leave it to US riders Rosey Fletcher and Sondra van Ert. Fletcher has been ranked second after the first run and right before the start got the following message from Jan Wengelin, who had set the course for the second run. "Hey Rosey, I'm down here and there's really zero problems on the entire slope. Get it going and you'll do fine. Don't be scarred to speed it up..." That might have been the key words for Fletcher's third-ever win on the tour.

"Sondra was right behind me after the first run," she said, "and I know just from training how she can really turn it on when it counts so I had to push myself. In racing you push yourself and you do well or you fall, so I had nothing to lose. We're lucky that it's turning out this way, we both started the season off great, but we don't really talk about it, we're just like 'OK we're gonna go for it'..."

"Sondra was right behind me after the first run and I know just from training how she can really turn it on when it counts so I had to push myself. In racing you push yourself and you do well or you fall, so I had nothing to lose..."— Rosey Fletcher

Being ranked fourth after the first run, Sondra van Ert finished 2nd. "That's definitely a great way to go home for the holiday," she said. "Having Rosey ahead of me is no problem, it's great having a teammate there. It's really nice to go one and two and better than two and three like in another race (at Sestriere)... Jan Wengelin setting the course for the second run may have helped a little, we know his bag of tricks, I think," said van Ert.

Ruby, despite the new mascot, dropped back to 3rd. Aasa Windahl from Sweden just missed the podium finishing 4th. However, she keeps the lead in the World Cup standings with 2300 points. Van Ert moved up to 2nd (1610) and sent Austrian Manuela Riegler who finished 9th today to 3rd place (1390).

The men's race was pure Bozzetto domain again. The tall blond parallel specialist from France looks like he's now also got it going on in GS. After all, none of his rivals could even get close to him and he took his second gold in a row after last week's win in Whistler.

	Matthieu Bozzetto

"I've got a F2 board with 186 centimeters length now," he explained, "and so far I only used it in Whistler and here. This is going really fast and it looks like it fits me a lot... Before Whistler I was almost thinking about stopping competing in GS. Today, I wanted to take advantage of the excellent snow and just did the same as in Whistler where I showed that I can still do something in GS. It was just perfect today. Whenever there was a bump or little hole, which usually slows you down, I had the feeling that the board made me fly over it...what an experience."

Canadian Jasey Jay Anderson saved the North Americans the only podium spot. Walter Feichter from Italy went into 3rd and his first medal. But for the Italians this was the conclusion of a sorry day. When they wanted to get their boards out of the waxing room in the morning, they found it locked. They finally had to break inot the room and they arrived at the GS slope ten minutes before the start of the race.

Stefan Kaltschütz from Austria finished 9th, but still keeps the lead in the GS standings with a total of 2090 points. Bozzetto moved up to 2nd and is chasing the Austrian with just a 54 points gap. Feichter is in now 3rd.

The halfpipe will conclude the Mont Sainte Anne event tomorrow with the last NOKIA Snowboard FIS World Cup competition of the millennium.

—Britta Semmler, MountainZone.com Correspondent