It capped a brilliant day for the Australian Paralympic Winter Team with leg amputee Toby Kane winning bronze to share the podium with Mayberry, and Melissa Perrine clinching bronze in the women's vision-impaired category.

Having claimed the silver medal in yesterday's Downhill in the men's standing class, Mayberry delivered an amazing performance in today's race for a memorable triumph, his first ever gold medal at an IPC World Cup event.

With Mayberry sealing victory in a time of 1:16.02, yesterday's winner Gerd Schoenfelder of Germany was forced to settle for silver (1:16.15), while Kane (1:16.38) claimed bronze for the second consecutive day.

The two Downhill shootouts were the last before the Paralympic Winter Games begin in Vancouver on March 12, where Mayberry and Kane must surely now rate as strong medal contenders in the fastest of the five alpine skiing disciplines.

How the Australians currently rate in the other disciplines will become clearer over the next two days, with the Super-G (Friday) and Super-Combined (Saturday) taking place.

But thus far in Aspen, Steve Graham, Head Coach of the Australian Winter Paralympic Team, could not be happier with the performance of his squad in what is the final competition before their ultimate test, the Vancouver Paralympics.

"It is such an excellent result for the team. Marty did everything right today and deserved to be on top of the podium," Graham said.

"This week has been great preparation for Vancouver. There are still a couple of important events to go but I'm really comfortable with where we at are at this stage of our Paralympic preparations."

In other Australian results today, Cameron Rahles-Rahbula finished in sixth in the men's standing class while team-mates Mitchell Gourley (23rd) and Nick Watts (28th), in his return from a broken leg, also skied solidly.

Source - APC

tags: olympic, paralympics, marty, mayberry, cameron, rahles-rahbula, tony, kane, melissa, perrine, mitch, gourley, nick, watts

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