{"id":1385928,"date":"2019-01-26T21:08:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T04:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/news\/french-skier-noel-beats-hirscher-for-2nd-straight-slalom-win\/"},"modified":"2019-01-26T21:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T04:08:00","slug":"french-skier-noel-beats-hirscher-for-2nd-straight-slalom-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/local-news\/french-skier-noel-beats-hirscher-for-2nd-straight-slalom-win\/","title":{"rendered":"French skier Noel beats Hirscher for 2nd straight slalom win"},"content":{"rendered":"
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KITZBUEHEL, Austria \u2014 Clement Noel wasted little time in confirming his status as one of slalom skiing’s hottest prospects. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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 overall champion Marcel Hirscher of Austria by 0.29 seconds. <\/p>\n

“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.” <\/p>\n

Noel’s French teammate Alexis Pinturault was 0.36 behind in third, followed by last year’s winner, Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway, in fourth. <\/p>\n

First-run leader Ramon Zenhaeusern of Switzerland made several mistakes in his final run and the Olympic silver medalist dropped to sixth. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“(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.” <\/p>\n

Noel’s wins in Wengen and Kitzbuehel are crowning a breakthrough month for the French skier, who won the junior world title last year. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“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.” <\/p>\n

Teammate Pinturault called it “really special” to share the podium with Noel. <\/p>\n

“He is definitely the future of this discipline,” said Pinturault, who has 21 World Cup victories. <\/p>\n

Noel’s recent results have come as anything but a surprise to Hirscher, who won the slalom World Cup five times in the past six seasons. <\/p>\n

“The first time I saw him, you could see he is technically really brilliant,” the Austrian said. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“It was really more than I expected after the first run. It’s pretty OK and I am super happy with 80 points. It’s not easy at the moment,” he said. <\/p>\n

Hirscher’s main slalom rival in recent years, Henrik Kristoffersen, was 0.92 off going into the final run, and posted the second-fastest time to finish fourth. The Norwegian’s last World Cup win came in Kitzbuehel a year ago. <\/p>\n

Hirscher remained top of the discipline standings with 576 points, followed by Noel on 401 and Kristoffersen on 369. <\/p>\n

Apart from the snowfall, the icy surface and a tough course set in the first run made for difficult conditions on the Ganslernhang. Only 40 from 79 starters managed to finish their runs. <\/p>\n

Manuel Feller, who finished runner-up to Noel last week, posted the fourth-fastest time but the Austrian was later disqualified for straddling a gate. <\/p>\n

Bulgarian skier Albert Popov, who had only scored World Cup points in two previous races and started 71st, came a surprising fifth in the opening run. Popov ultimately finished ninth for his career-best result. He had won a lower-ranked FIS slalom in Val Palot, Italy, on Wednesday in preparation for the Hahnenkamm slalom. <\/p>\n

The slalom was moved from its initial slot on Sunday after organizers had brought forward Saturday’s classic downhill to Friday to avoid the marquee event being affected by the weather. A super-G wraps up the 79th Hahnenkamm event on Sunday. <\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KITZBUEHEL, Austria \u2014 Clement Noel wasted little time in confirming his status as one of slalom skiing’s hottest prospects. 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1385928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-30 22:57:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KKCH - The Lift FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1385928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1385928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1385928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kkch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1385928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}