CHAMONIX, France – Olympic champion Clement Noel led men´s Alpine Skiing World Cup race after the opening run as the Frenchman seeks his first win in more than a year.
Noel posted the fastest times in the last two sections of the Verte course to beat Timon Haugan of Norway by 0.23 seconds.
Manuel Feller was 0.40 behind in third. The Austrian triumphed in three of the previous six slaloms to lead the discipline standings.
Linus Strasser, who won the last two slaloms in Kitzbuehel and Schladming, was 17th with the German having 1.24 to make up on Noel in the second run.
“It was a solid run. When I crossed the finish line, I was quite sure it was a good run,” said Noel, who has 10 career victories but only one since winning Olympic gold in Beijing two years ago.
“My first part was not that good, but it was like a little bit on purpose, just to be solid and try not to do something crazy in the beginning,” Noel added according to AP. “And then I tried to push at the bottom, and it pays off.”
Noel also led after the opening run of a night slalom at Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, last December but ultimately finished runner-up to Marco Schwarz.
That result sent Schwarz top of the overall standings, but the Austrian sustained a season-ending knee injury at a downhill the following week.
The slalom in Chamonix, the resort at the base of the Mont Blanc that hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924, was the only World Cup ski race taking place this weekend.
Elsewhere, Switzerland’s Daniel Yule made history as the first skier to come from 30th after the first run to win a men’s World Cup slalom race in Chamonix.
Yule secured the victory 0.16 seconds ahead of countryman Loic Meillard, while Noel Clement of France claimed third place, finishing 0.18 seconds off the pace.
Yule took advantage of being the first skier in the second run, racing down the pristine track in the French Alps before the warm weather softened the surface as the race progressed.
“I thought, ‘OK, it’s warm weather, you have a perfect track,’ so we can maybe go and fight for a top 10 or something, but I never dreamt about the win,” Yule said.
The temperature, which reached 10 degrees Celsius, also led to the earlier cancellation of the weekend’s downhill races.
“It was warm when the sun came out, the slope suffered a bit more in the second run,” Yule said. “I was definitely lucky but also I took my chance. In a career sometimes you get lucky, other times I’ve been on the unlucky side.”
Yule admitted his unique achievement was helped by the rising temperatures for the final run in the early afternoon.
“It´s so warm when the sun came out that the slope kind of suffered a bit more in the second run. So yes, I was definitely lucky, but I also took my chance,” he said after his seventh career slalom victory and first since winning in Kitzbuehel a year ago.
Yule made a big mistake in his first run on the Verte course and was left with almost two seconds to make up on Noel, but then benefitted from his early start in the second run by posting the fastest times in all four sections.
Slowed by the worsening course, most racers lost several tenths of their first-run advantage over Yule at every checkpoint and finished well behind.
Meillard came runner-up to make it a Swiss 1-2 finish.
“Daniel took his chance, I would say, and he showed that it was possible to come back. We can both be happy,” Meillard said.
Noel, the Olympic slalom champion, slammed one of his ski poles against a finish-area safety barrier in frustration after losing his first-run lead.
“It was really difficult at the end, it was really really bumpy, but I think I had the possibly to win this race,” said Noel. “I am confident, I know that I ski fast. Two third places in a row, no big mistakes, I ski quite solid at the moment so that´s really nice.”
Linus Strasser, who won the last two slaloms in Kitzbuehel and Schladming, finished 0.60 behind in 14th.
The slalom in Chamonix, the resort at the base of the Mont Blanc that hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924, was the only World Cup ski race taking place this weekend.
Two men´s downhills in Chamonix and women´s speed races in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, were all canceled amid poor snow conditions.
