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Dominique Maltais picks up snowboard cross silver, 4th-straight podium, adds to overall lead

Dominique Maltais is on a roll. The 33-year-old snowboarder from Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, Quebec achieved her fourth-straight podium finish on the World Cup snowboard cross circuit this season Sunday, collecting a silver medal at Vallnord-Arcalís, Andorra. Maltais earned gold in the same location Saturday and now has three silvers and a gold in four World Cup events this season, giving her a firm grip on the overall lead. She currently has 3,400 points, which puts her over 800 points ahead of American snowboarder Lindsay Jacobellis, who's in second with 2,560 points. If Maltais can keep up this kind of form, she'll be a strong favourite to medal in Sochi.

What's remarkable is that Maltais could be even further ahead in the overall standings. She was leading through most of Sunday's final race, but was passed by Czech Eva Samkova near the bottom of the course. As she told The Canadian Press, she miscalculated the conditions near the end:

'I made a major error,'' said Maltais. ''The course was pretty chewed up after being perfect all weekend and I lost some control. Still you have to give Eva credit. We were side-by-side the whole way and without my error it would be have been very close at the finish.''

When a major error still leaves you in second place and with a stranglehold on the overall standings, you're doing pretty well. Of course, though, success is nothing new to Maltais. This marked her 35th career snowboard cross World Cup medal. She also earned the Crystal Globe as the FIS overall champion in 2011, collected a bronze at the world championships that year and picked up a silver medal at the Snowboarding World Championships last January. However, Olympic success has been slightly more difficult for Maltais; while she picked up a bronze at the 2006 Games in Turin, she was disqualified on her first run in 2010 and didn't advance to the elimination round. (Canadian teammate Maelle Ricker wound up taking gold in Vancouver; Ricker is doing well on the World Cup circuit this year too, finishing sixth Sunday and placing seventh in the overall standings thus far.)

We'll see if Maltais can carry her World Cup form into Sochi. The tiring nature of the circuit is certainly good preparation for the Olympics; as she told CP Sunday, the tight schedule can be draining, but it can also provide useful experience.

"It's really hard. I'm not getting younger," the 33-year-old said with a laugh. "I think those young girls, they get an advantage a bit. This morning I was really sore."

But her strategy, Maltais says, is always the same, regardless of how few or how many hours she has between her events.

"I knew I had to race two races in a row so I sat down with my coaches last night and set up a specific goal for today," she said. "It was a pretty big day — we had to qualify in the morning and race in the afternoon — so considering we were already tired, it was a bit like the scenario we're going to have to face in the Olympics.

"I wanted to qualify well and focus on my specific racing goal and race as well as I know I can do."

Maltais certainly did that Sunday. If she can maintain this form, she'll be a key Canadian to watch on the Russian slopes.