ShareSUN VALLEY: Loic Meillard led teammate Marco Odermatt to a Swiss one-two in the men’s giant slalom at the World Cup finals at Sun Valley, Idaho, on Wednesday. Meillard, who won the world championship titles in slalom and team combined last month, clocked a winning aggregate time of 2min 15.21sec. The victory was Meillard’s seventh career World Cup win and his fourth in the giant slalom.
Meillard, who also won at last year’s World Cup finals, had grabbed the lead after the opening run in 1:10.35 with Brazil’s Lucas Pinheiro Braathen second, 0.53sec adrift. Swiss star Odermatt — who had already clinched the overall, downhill, super-G and giant slalom titles — came in second at 0.95sec. “It’s so much nicer to win the globe if I have a good result on this day,” Odermatt said. “I gave it all once again. I had a big fight on the slope but it was really nice that I did enough for the podium.” Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen was third in 2:16.35 with Pinheiro Braathen eventually finishing fourth (2:16.54).
Odermatt, who has won the past four overall globes, captured his fourth consecutive giant slalom globe with 580 points to 454 for Kristoffersen and 434 for Meillard. “It sometimes feels unbelievable,” Odermatt said. “Also today, it’s always so much hard work where you get into this zone again where you can push, where you can fight for the top spot. It can cost you so much energy and sometimes I don’t know how I manage to do it. “It’s just a nice feeling.” Odermatt said he was proudest of keeping his form through the grind of a full season. “I think just having this consistency and pushing every day,” he said. “And still stay a nice person. This is something important for me as well.”
Pinheiro Braathen, who represented Norway until March 2024, would have taken the first triumph for Brazil in any discipline in World Cup skiing. Kristoffersen took a silver medal in giant slalom at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and captured the 2019 world title in the discipline. The World Cup finals conclude Thursday with men’s and women’s slalom races. — AFP
