Odermatt Wins Val d'Isere GS

Marco Odermatt has also started his giant slalom season late. The Nidwaldner found his way back to winning after his failures in Sölden and Beaver Creek. He is now used to it in Val d'Isère: he won for the fourth time in a row in grey, wintry conditions including snowfall and bagged his 39th World Cup victory in total - he is now only one victory behind the Swiss record World Cup winner Pirmin Zurbriggen.

With his success, Odermatt prevented a chaotic race from taking a completely crazy turn. The track suffered greatly in the second run. Several drivers, including Loïc Meillard and Thomas Tumler, paid tribute to the changed conditions and fell back after promising placings.

Odermatt, however, managed to save a lead of 2.41 seconds over Patrick Feurstein by a mere 8 hundredths of a second. The Austrian had started the second run in 24th place. His compatriot Stefan Brennsteiner secured third place behind him.

Odermatt had surprised many with an indifferent start to his overall Alpine season, but it was his struggles in Giant Slalom in particular that had raised eyebrows early on. Having won nine out of ten Giant Slalom races last season, Odermatt failed to even finish at the first two stops of the new season in Sölden and Beaver Creek.

However, the 27-year-old put all of that behind him as he was fastest after the first run with a time of 1:04.80, which ended up being more valuable than he could have known at the time. The weather began to close in during the second race, with visibility incredibly low as the top eight all struggled to break into the podium places despite good first runs.

Odermatt, too, lost a lot of time in his second run but ultimately hung on by his fingertips as he ousted Patrick Feurstein (AUT/Rossignol) from top spot in the final run of the day by eight hundredths of a second.

"This one really feels great," Stöckli skier Odermatt said of his fourth consecutive victory on the Val d'Isère course. "To come back and gain the confidence in the race like this is not the easiest, but I knew I could do it. I also know that these conditions are exactly for me, because you have to fight - you have to ski well and yeah, I tried to do that. For sure today the luck was also on my side, because one mistake more... I guess I lost three seconds, and to lose another half a second more happens really fast today."

Stefan Brennsteiner (AUT/Fischer) finished third, while Luca Aerni (SUI/Fischer) and Henrik Kristoffersen (NOR/Van Deer) completed the top five.

To indicate how the conditions favoured the earlier skiers on the second run, Feurstein was 24th after the first run before climbing up the standings in sunny conditions second time out. Conversely, Odermatt's second run later in the day was not even fast enough to make it into the top 20 of the second round.

"I still can't believe it, really, but it was an incredible time on the hot seat," Feurstein said of his lengthy time spent as race leader. "I knew that my run was really, really good, and that I could make up many places, but that I would land on the podium? I didn't imagine that. I'm out of words right now."

Feurstein was calm throughout his time on the hot seat until it was confirmed that he would finish on the podium, at which point he let out a roar.

"All the emotions broke out of me because I worked so hard all my life to get to this point," the Rossignol skier said. "I've seen it in front of my eyes so many times, and that it's now a reality, it's unbelievable."

Brennsteiner narrowly missed out on ousting Feurstein near the end of the day, but ultimately finished four hundredths of second behind his Val d'Isère roommate.

"The first time when I looked on the timing, I was so sad that I couldn't reach the first spot, but then I saw that Patrick is in front of me, and I was just happy," the Fischer skier said. "I put down two good runs, and especially since the conditions were extremely tough today, I'm happy that I could achieve such runs."

Feurstein said of the pair's plans to celebrate their success: "I think we will pop show us some champagne bottles right now and then we'll see what happens."