Bode Miller's conditioning is strong and his sprained ankle is getting better. It's the wind and the light, however, that have been slowing the two-time overall World Cup winner.

Miller finished ninth Sunday as the Saslong downhill marked its 40th year. His performance was affected by a strong headwind that whipped up just as he and the other contenders took the course.

Manuel Osborne-Paradis won in 2 minutes, 1.27 seconds to give the injury-hit Canadian team a boost. Mario Scheiber of Austria was second, 0.13 seconds behind. Ambrosi Hoffmann of Switzerland and Johan Clarey of France shared third, 0.25 seconds behind the Canadian.

Osborne-Paradis, Hoffmann and Clarey each started before the wind shift.

"Take nothing away from the guys in the lead because they skied well," Miller said. "But there's two ingredients you need besides your skiing to win here.

"You're skis have to be fast on that day and you need to have the right start position and it's hard to predict what that start position is going to be because the wind moves around and the clouds come and then go away, but it was clear those guys had some favorable conditions."

Miller was an early starter in Friday's super-G and struggled with bad light to place fifth.

This time, Miller could at least console himself with the fact that his skiing was competitive with the likes of two-time defending champion Michael Walchhofer and Didier Cuche, who also had to deal with the wind.

Walchhofer placed fifth and Cuche _ skiing with a broken rib _ came 10th.

"Cuche said he skied well, I skied error-free, Walchhofer said he couldn't have skied any better and all of us are back a ways, so we just didn't have the luck today," Miller said.

Miller debated retirement over the summer and did virtually no offseason training. Then he injured his ankle during a team volleyball game in Val d'Isere, France, last week. But he's stopped taking painkillers and anti-inflammatory medicine for his ankle.

"That made it a little bit worse. But to recover between races I have to be off that stuff, otherwise I can't race four races in a row," he said. "It was sore but in the race it didn't seem to make much difference."

There has been an unusually high number of skiers injured this season but the Canadian team has been particularly hard hit, already losing downhill world champion John Kucera, Jean-Philippe Roy, Larisa Yurkiw and Kelly Vanderbeek before its home Olympics in Vancouver from Feb. 12-28.

Another Canadian, Francois Bourque, pulled up with a suspected torn ligament in his left knee Friday, and will probably also miss the rest of the season.