Olympic ski champion Noel leads the first World Cup slalom of the season; Hirscher fails to qualify for the second point

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 lead in the opening run, beating Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen by 0.80 seconds. Swiss all-rounder Loic Meillard came third, 0.95 behind.

Lucas Pinheiro Braathen finished fourth, missing out by a tenth on 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 retiring after five years.

Noel overcame what seemed 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 virtually flawless second run.

“It was a tough fight. Really happy with my second run,” said Noel. “It was pretty good skiing, I think. I knew Henrik set the bar high. On the field he skied very, very 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 in a night race in Austria in January 2023 – his only other win since winning Olympic gold in Beijing.

Kristoffersen set the fastest time in a frantic final run that saw him rise from 11th position. The two-time slalom world champion was aiming for his first World Cup victory since January 2023 and called his second place “100 percent a step in the right direction.”

Meillard, who missed the season’s giant slalom three weeks ago after pinching his back during warm-up, was second 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 behind the lead in the opening run before going into a gate in the second over.

Feller finished fifth or better in every slalom race last season.

Pinheiro Braathen, who returned this season and joined Brazil after leaving the Norwegian federation a year ago, started 33rd but worked his way up to fourth, matching his performance in the season-opening GS.

“It’s such a relief to get these results in slalom and GS, I’m so grateful,” said Pinheiro Braathen. “It was a really tough race today, with this difficult ice it was a brutal return to slalom.”

Hirscher finished the opening run 2.59 off the lead in 46th place in his first slalom race in 2,072 days.

The Austrian star, who now plays for the Netherlands, returned to World Cup racing this season after retiring in 2019.

“The first time I thought it went well, but then it turned into one of the worst slalom runs of my life relatively quickly,” 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 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 next weekend for a women’s and men’s slalom in Gurgl.

___

More AP skiing: