Craig Branch has opened his World Cup season with a 51st placing in the downhill in Lake Louise, Canada.
In his first competitive outing since injuring his knee in Beaver Creek nearly 12 months ago, Branch recorded a time of 1:45.37, 2.58 seconds behind the race winner Jan Hudec of Canada.
It was Hudec's first victory and first World Cup podium, though the 26-year-old Banff local had won the downhill silver medal at last year's World Championships in Are.
The Lake Louise podium was an unfamiliar one all round, with Marco Sullivan of the USA taking his first medal and Andrew Buder of Austria collecting only the second podium placing of his career.
Although Branch's OWI/NSWIS team-mate Jono Brauer and SSA/NSWIS skier Brenton Fetterplace both trained on the Lake Louise course in preparation for the super G, neither raced the downhill.
Fetterplace was the best of the Australians in the super G, finishing in 54th place in his debut World Cup appearance.
He posted a time of 1 minute 35.09 seconds, 5.9 seconds behind the gold medal time of defending World Cup champion Aksel Lund Svindal of Sweden.
Branch failed to finish the Men's Olympic course.
The silver medal went to Benjamin Raich of Austria, with Didier Cuche of Switzerland, the reigning World Cup downhill champion, in the bronze medal position.
Svindal leads the World Cup overall standings on 234 points from Raich on 166.
Downhill, super G, combined and giant slalom races are scheduled this week in Beaver Creek, with the combined kicking off the action on November 30 AEST.