Henrik Kristoffersen kept his head to deliver a flawless second run and seal his first giant slalom win of the season in Slovenia on Saturday.
The Norweigan was leading in Kranjska Gora after the first run but was up against it as former Norwegian now competing under the Brazilian flag Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, seventh after the first leg, put in a storming second run to jump to the top of the pack with six skiers still to go.
One by one they fell short of the mark – Alexander Steen Olsen, fourth in the morning, trailing in 19th, Joan Verdu (third) settling for ninth, and Marco Odermatt slotting in second.
Then it was all eyes on whether Kristoffersen could deny Brazil their first ever World Cup win, with all Pinheiro Braathen’s previous wins coming before he switched allegiance to his mother’s country after a falling out with the Norwegian ski federation.
The 30-year-old Kristoffersen wasn’t about to let his first win of the season go abegging, going green in all the sectors for a combined time of 2min 18.18sec, 0.41 clear of Pinheiro Braathen, with Odermatt 0.52 away in third.
“This means a lot; it was a nice race, almost better on the second run,” he said.
The former double world champion (giant slalom in 2019 and slalom in 2023) was taking his World Cup tally to 32 wins, eight of them giant slaloms.
Austria’s Raphael Haaser, who upstaged defending champion Odermatt and the mighty Swiss men’s team to claim world giant slalom gold on home snow in Saalbach, came in seventh.
In the giant slalom standings, Kristoffersen moved to within 41 points of Odermatt with two races to go.
Odermatt, who won the super-G crown at last month’s world championships, holds a handsome lead in the overall World Cup standings with 10 races of the season remaining.
