More acrobatic than ever on rutted snow, the king of skiing Marco Odermatt offered himself a second victory in a row on Saturday in the giant Adelboden (Switzerland), knocking out the race for the big globe a little more.
Leaving the first leg despite his bib number 6, the world number 1 also dominated the second to conquer his 17th World Cup success at only 25 years old, making more than 24,000 spectators exult in the arrival area, drowned under a sea of Swiss flags.
The Norwegian Henrik Kristoffersen, impressive after flying over the Garmisch-Partenkirchen slalom on Wednesday, fails 0.73 from the winner while the versatile Swiss Loïc Meillard takes the 12th podium of his career, and already the 3rd of the season in three disciplines different, 1''66 from Odermatt.
But on a Chuenisbärgli dented by the spring conditions, neither the liveliness of "Kristo" nor the technical purity of Meillard could compete with the unparalleled agility of the holder of the big globe, passed very close to the exit of the track in second sleeve, and able to recover on one leg at full speed.
In the general classification, the 25-year-old from Nidwalden takes off with a 400-point lead over the Norwegian Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, the best downhiller in the world, who nevertheless scored his first points of the season as a giant with a very good 9th place ( at 2''99), when he was out in the second run at Sölden and in the first at Alta Badia.
Pinturault 6th, Muffat-Jeandet helicoptered
On the French side, Alexis Pinturault finished 6th at 2''50, paying for a big brake when approaching the final wall in the second heat (16th in qualifying), when he came out satisfied with his 4th time in the first heat, on a track where he has already triumphed in 2017 and twice in 2021. Author of a promising first heat, with the 7th fastest time despite his number 21, Victor Muffat-Jeandet fell very violently at the start of the second after having was thrown off balance on a bump, ending up in the net after hitting the track with his head.
Victim of cuts to one hand and bruising to the face, the 33-year-old skier was transported by helicopter to hospital in Bern, almost a year to the day after the fracture of the fibula during the slalom in Zagreb which left him had cost the Beijing 2022 Olympics.
Defending world champion Mathieu Faivre, who only finished the first race in 23rd place, missed one of the very first gates at the start of the second and also had to retire.
Léo Anguenot, 24th after the first heat, had an excellent second run which allowed him to take 16th place in the final classification of the event.