Australia's Mitchell Gourley finishes up at 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships

March 1, 2013

With Australia not having a team compete at Wednesday's IPC Alpine World Championships in La Molina, Spain, Mitchell Gourley finished his turn at the competition where the 2010 Winter Paralympian failed to earn a single medal.

On the first day of competition, Gourley finished tied in thirteenth place with Swiss skier Thomas Pfyl in the with a time of 1:36.40, 6.66 seconds off the winning time set by Austria's Markus Salcher. In the event on the second day of competition, Gourley finished in eleventh place with a time of 1:16.90 seconds, 4.41 seconds behind winner Salcher. On the third competition day, Gourley earned an eighth place finish in the with a combined run time of 2:09.66, 3.37 seconds slower than seventh place finisher Andrzej Szczesny of Poland and 13.81 seconds behind winner Vincent Gauthier-Manuel of. 28 skiers started the Slalom event but only 13 managed to place. Gourley had his best finish in the event where he finished in fifth position with a combined run time of 1:45.34, 0.15 seconds slower than fourth place finisher Russian Alexandr Alyabyev and 2.90 seconds slower than Austrian winner Matthias Lanzinger. On the last day of competition, Gourley successfully finished his first run in the but finished with a  as a result of his second run. Gourley is next set to compete at the Sochi Test event.

Gourley was the only Australian competitor at the Championships. His Australian teammates, including, , , and , missed the Championships either because they needed a small break from this season's competition schedule or to give themselves additional time to train for the Sochi Test event coming up next month.