LEVI, Finland (AP) — Olympic champion Clement Noel dominated the first men’s World Cup slalom of the season on Sunday for his first victory in 22 months.
The Frenchman protected his opening-run lead to beat Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway by 0.80 seconds. Swiss allrounder Loic Meillard placed third, 0.95 behind.
Lucas Pinheiro Braathen came fourth, missing by one tenth what would have been the first ever World Cup podium result in Alpine skiing for Brazil.
Record eight-time overall champion Marcel Hirscher, a three-time winner in Levi, failed to qualify for the second run in his first slalom since coming out of retirement after five years.
Noel overcame what looked like a costly mistake in his opening run when he had to brake in the steep middle section of the Levi Black course, but he put in a nearly error-free second run.
“It was a tough fight. Really, really happy about my second run,” Noel said. “It was quite some good skiing, I think. I knew that Henrik set the bar high. In the pitch he skied really, really well. So, I just tried to push really hard because I knew it was tight.”
It was Noel's 11th career World Cup win and first since triumphing at a night race in Austria in January 2023 — his only other victory since winning Olympic gold in Beijing.
Kristoffersen posted the fastest time in a frenetic final run that saw him rise from 11th position. The two-time slalom world champion was aiming for his first World Cup win since January 2023, and called his runner-up finish “100 per cent a step in the right direction.”
Meillard, who missed the season-opening giant slalom three weeks ago after tweaking his back during warmups, was the runner-up to Swiss teammate Marco Odermatt in the overall standings last season.
Odermatt does not compete in slaloms.
Manuel Feller, the defending World Cup slalom champion, failed to score World Cup points. The Austrian finished 1.18 seconds off the lead in the opening run before straddling a gate in the second.
Feller was fifth or better in each slalom race last season.
Pinheiro Braathen, returning this season and starting for Brazil after leaving the Norwegian federation a year ago, started 33rd but worked his way up to fourth, matching his achievement in the season-opening GS.
“It's such a relief that I get these results in slalom and GS, I'm so grateful,” Pinheiro Braathen said. “It was really a tough race today, with this tricky ice, it was a brutal return to slalom.”
Hirscher finished the opening run 2.59 off the lead in 46th position in his first slalom race in 2,072 days.
The Austrian great, now starting for the Netherlands, returned to World Cup racing this season after his retirement in 2019.
“The first gates I thought that’s going nicely but then it relatively quickly turned into one of the worst slalom runs of my life,” Hirscher said.
American skier Benjamin Ritchie was fifth-fastest in the second run and finished the race in 13th, as the skier from Waitsfield, Vermont improved on his previous career-best result by seven places.
While Levi is an annual stop on the women’s World Cup circuit, with Mikaela Shiffrin winning on Saturday, the men had not raced in Finnish Lapland since 2019.
The World Cup returns to Austria for a women's and a men's slalom in Gurgl next weekend.
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The Associated Press
