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Meillard leads Swiss sweep in Val d'Isere giant slalom / Photo: Olivier CHASSIGNOLE - AFP
NYSE - LSE
Meillard leads Swiss sweep in Val d'Isere giant slalom
Loic Meillard collected his first World Cup win of the season as he led home a Swiss clean sweep in the giant slalom at Val d'Isere on Saturday.
Meillard, who was fifth after the first run, finished 0.18 seconds ahead of Luca Aerni with Marco Odermatt a further 0.15sec behind in third.
This was Meillard's eighth World Cup win, his fifth in giant slalom, and marks a welcome return to form for the reigning slalom world champion, who has struggled this season.
After summer training hampered by a painful back, he had managed only one top-10 since the start of the season, with ninth place in the giant slalom at Beaver Creek.
World No.1 Odermatt came into Val d’Isere on a run of four straight giant slalom victories and was running fourth after the first run.
He looked a long way off his best on a stuttering second run, clipping a gate with his glove, but did enough to finish with another podium.
Odermatt will to wait a little longer to claim his 50th World Cup win and equal Italy’s Alberto Tomba tally.
Ingemar Stenmark's 86 wins is the record for men with Marcel Hirscher (67) and Hermann Maier (54) also ahead of Odermatt.
Mikaela Shiffrin holds the overall record with 104 World Cup wins.
Odermatt, however, retains the lead in the giant slalom standings as well as the overall, with twice as many points as Austria’s Stefan Brennsteiner who led after the first run only to finish fifth.
The Val d’Isère stop concludes Sunday morning with a slalom.
(W.Walker--TAG)
