Olympic ski champion Noel leads season’s 1st World Cup slalom; Hirscher fails to qualify for 2nd run

LEVI, Finland (AP) — Olympic champion Clement Noel posted the fastest time in the opening run of the first men’s World Cup slalom of the season on Sunday, and record eight-time overall champion Marcel Hirscher failed to qualify for the second run.

Noel overcame what looked like a costly mistake when he had to brake in the steep middle section of the Levi Black course and edged out Swiss allrounder Loic Meillard by 0.02 seconds.

Noel’s French teammate Steven Amiez was 0.21 behind in third.

“It was tough, the snow is difficult — sometimes there’s grip, sometimes no grip,” Noel said. “I hope I can do a better second run, I had quite a few mistakes in the first.”

Noel is seeking his 11th career World Cup win and first since triumphing at a night race in Austria in January 2023 — his sole victory since winning Olympic gold in Beijing.

Meillard, who missed the season-opening giant slalom three weeks ago after tweaking his back during warmups, was the runner-up 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, had 1.18 second to make up in the second run later Sunday.

Hirscher, a three-time winner in Levi, finished 2.59 off the lead and outside the top 30 in his first slalom race in 2,072 days.

The Austrian great, now starting for the Netherlands, returned to World Cup racing this season after his retirement in 2019.

“The first gates I thought that’s going nicely but then it relatively quickly turned into one of the worst slalom runs of my life,” Hirscher said.

Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, another racer coming back and starting for Brazil since leaving the Norwegian federation a year ago, started 33rd but finished 0.86 behind in 10th.

Finnish skier Eduard Hallberg, wearing bib 40, pleased the home crowd by posting the eighth-fastest time, six tenths behind leader Noel, in only his fourth race at the World Cup level.

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.

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