Vancouver's Manuel Osborne-Paradis shocked the field by finishing second in Saturday's season-opening World Cup men's downhill event at Lake Louise, Alta.

The unheralded Canadian overcame the cold weather (-14 C) and poor visibility and recovered from an early slip to post the second-fastest time of the day, conquering the 3.1-kilometre course in one minute, 50.77 seconds.

Canada's Manuel Osborne-Paradis finished second in Saturday's men's downhill race.
(Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images)

Liechtenstein's Marco Buechel finished first in 1:50.72. Italian Peter Fill was third in 1:50.86.

"I was just really on top of it," said Osborne-Paradis of his breakthrough performance. "Everything was smooth and I felt like I was looking 20 feet farther down the hill than I normally do and I felt like I was really in the zone."

The 22-year-old Osborne-Paradis, whose previous best downhill result was a 12th-place finish, threw caution to the wind and led for a long time after going down fourth but was eventually trumped by Buechel who was the 28th skier to hit the slope.

Osborne-Paradis is only the second Canadian man to finish on the podium in a Lake Louise World Cup downhill. Teammate Erik Guay of Mont-Tremblant, Que., finished second in 2003.

Other Canadian results Saturday: John Kucera of Calgary was 14th in 1:51.87; Jan Hudec of Banff, Alta., was 17th in 1:51.99; Guay was 23rd in 1:52.19; Francois Bourque of Pin Rouge, Que., was 33rd in 1:52.67; Gareth Sine of Calgary was 36th in 1:52.75.

Austrian skiers swept the top five spots in Friday's final training run, but failed to reach the podium on Saturday.  Hans Grugger was the top Austrian, finishing fourth in 1:51.11.

The super-G in Lake Louise goes on Sunday. Osborne-Paradis won't be competing in that race because he did not qualify.

With files from Canadian Press