BARDONECCHIA, Italy (CP-AP) _ Montreal's Dominique Maltais survived a crash-filled final to win a bronze medal in the women's snowboard cross event at the Winter Olympics on Friday.

Switzerland's Tanja Frieden won gold in the event after Lindsey Jacobellis of the U.S. grabbed her snowboard and fell on the second-to-last jump before the finish line.

Jacobellis managed to recover and finish ahead of Maltais, who had crashed through a fence earlier in the race.

Maelle Ricker of Whistler, B.C., was the first to fall during the final. She came off a jump early in the course, rotated awkwardly, caught her backside edge on the landing and smacked her back and head onto the ground.

Ricker, who was loaded onto a sled and taken off the hill, suffered a slight concussion. It wasn't immediately known if she would be able to participate in the parallel giant slalom event, which gets underway on Feb. 23.

The 27-year-old Ricker easily won both her quarter-final and semifinal races after capturing the top seed with a qualifying time of one minute 27.85 seconds _ a whopping 1.48 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Maltais.

But the real action came in the final, when the riders line up four-wide at the starting gate and battle down the 1,000-metre course.

Maltais was battling for position after Ricker went down when she went careening into the netting after a jump and nearly hit a spectator.

That made it a two-woman show and it wasn't even a contest. Jacobellis could have practically crawled the rest of the way to the finish line. She probably wishes she had.

With all of her competitors well behind, the American made a hotdog grab of her board and fell. While she scrambled to her feet, Frieden became the first women's champion in the strange and wild sport.

When Jacobellis crossed the finish line, she put her hands on her knees and held her palms up. U.S. coach Peter Foley fell onto the ground in disbelief.