Kitzbuehel, Austria
Six days after winning his first World Cup in Wengen, the 21-year-old French skier added a victory at another iconic venue on Saturday.
Skiing in dense snowfall, Noel won the slalom event of the Hahnenkamm races, posting the third-fastest time in the final run to beat seven-time Austrian overall champion Marcel Hirscher by 0.29 seconds.
“It sounds like a dream,” Noel said. “It were two amazing weeks. It’s really special in Kitzbuehel, there is so many people in the finish area. I have never seen something like this. It’s a perfect day.”
Noel’s French teammate, Alexis Pinturault, was 0.36 behind in third, followed by last year’s winner, Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen, in fourth.
Swiss first-run leader Ramon Zenhaeusern made several mistakes in his final run and the Olympic silver medalist dropped to sixth.
Noel became the first French skier to win back-to-back slaloms since former two-time world champion Jean-Baptiste Grange won two races in three days, in Kitzbuehel and Schladming, eight years ago.
Last week in Switzerland, Noel had to defend an opening-run lead for the first time in a World Cup race, and mastered the task. On Saturday, he kept his nerves again when chasing another podium result.
“(Wengen was) the first time that I was leading. I was not used to it,” he said. “But today I was not nervous. When I am calm I can ski fast, so I always try to stay calm at the start.”
Noel’s wins in Wengen and Kitzbuehel are crowning a breakthrough month for the French skier, who won the junior world title last year.
He finished fourth in Zagreb in the first week of January and just missed out on his first win a week later, coming runner-up to Hirscher in Adelboden for his first podium result.
“It feels really, really good,” Noel said. “For now, I just enjoy the moment. I hope it will continue this way but you never know.”
Teammate Pinturault called it “really special” to share the podium with Noel.
“He is definitely the future of this discipline,” said Pinturault, who has 21 World Cup victories.
Hirscher had won 11 of the previous 14 slaloms, but was not in the lead after the first run for a fifth straight race. The Austrian trailed by 0.88 in ninth, but clocked the fastest time in a frenetic final run, which saw him climb seven places in the standings.
Women: Schmidhofer Denies Goggia on comeback
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
Schmidhofer, the super-G world champion, finished 0.23 seconds ahead of Olympic downhill champion Goggia, who was racing for the first time after breaking a bone in her right ankle while training in October.
Goggia shrugged, lifting her arms with a wry smile as Schmidhofer finished for just her third World Cup career victory.
“I was really happy with the race today but actually I was really happy anyway,” Goggia said. “Garmisch is supposed to be just a test for my ankle. I am really grateful and joyful.”
Schmidhofer, who won the season’s first two downhills at Lake Louise, Canada, reflected on her own good form.
“You can nearly say this is the best ‘Schmidi’ that we’ve ever seen. I’ve never won three races in one year. Everything is going to plan,” the 29-year-old Schmidhofer said.
Lara Gut-Behrami, who had been going for her third consecutive super-G win in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, was third, 0.45 off the pace, ahead of Italy’s Federica Brignone and France’s Romane Miradoli.
The super-G start was delayed by heavy snowfall. Conditions improved, however, and a ray of sunshine poked through the clouds as the skiers descended.
“It was a long time from the inspection to the start,” Schmidhofer said.
The race was originally scheduled for Sunday, but organizers switched races due to adverse weather forecasts and Saturday’s downhill will now take place on Sunday instead.
Lindsey Vonn is skipping the weekend’s races to give her troublesome knee injury a chance to recover, and American teammate Mikaela Shiffrin is also taking a break.
Shiffrin, the overall World Cup and super-G leader, plans to return in Maribor, Slovenia next weekend before the world championships in Are, Sweden.
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