ZÜRICH – France’s former world champion snowboarder was killed in an avalanche in Switzerland, the French Olympic Committee said.
The 40-year-old Julie Pomagalski was swept away while skiing off-piste in a group of four in the canton of Uri.
Another French freeride snowboarder was also killed in the avalanche.
Pomagalski was a teenager when she became world champion in snowboard cross in 1999.
She took the World Cup title for the discipline in 2004 and registered nine wins on the World Cup circuit. In 2002, she competed in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and four years later in the Turin Games.
Police said the avalanche struck on Tuesday as the group was descending from the Gemsstock Mountain.
A sheet of snow broke which swept three skiers away, a police report said.
Pomagalski and the other skier who was killed – named by the French ski federation as Bruno Putelli, a mountain rescuer – “were completely buried”. The third person suffered minor injuries.(BBC)
