Odermatt leads Olympic giant slalom after snowy 1st run

BEIJING (AP) — Marco Odermatt skied through poor visibility amid falling snow and recovered from an early mistake to take the lead after the first run of the men’s giant slalom on Sunday at the Beijing Olympics.

After finishing his run, the Swiss skier waved his hand in front of his face to indicate difficulty in seeing the course clearly.

It’s the first time snow has fallen during an Alpine skiing race at this year’s Olympics.

About 15 seconds into Odermatt’s run, he got pushed low and off the racing line but recovered quickly to clear the next red gate.

Stefan Brennsteiner of Austria was 0.04 seconds behind in second and world champion Mathieu Faivre of France was 0.08 behind in third.

The second run is scheduled for later Sunday.

Snow has been falling since Saturday at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center, where athletes had been racing and training on artificial snow until then. A second women’s downhill training run scheduled for Sunday was canceled.

Alexis Pinturault, who has twice won Olympic bronze in the giant slalom and also won the overall and giant slalom World Cup titles last year, was 11th, 1.01 behind Odermatt. The Frenchman, however, has been hampered by a shoulder injury.

“I struggled to take all the risks on the flat parts. I felt my shoulder a bit,” Pinturault said. “I really couldn’t see anything. The snow is coming down hard.

“In addition, there aren’t any trees at the edge of the course, so you can’t see any landmarks … I hope in the second run the light will improve a bit so I can let go more.”

Visibility was also an issue for Italian racer Luca de Aliprandini, who said “you can’t see anything” after his first run. But he didn’t think the race should have been postponed.

“We did it a lot of times in difficult conditions like this. Maybe the visibility today is one of the worst, but the snow is in good shape,” de Aliprandini said. “That’s why I think it’s not dangerous. In this visibility, if the snow was no good, it would be really dangerous.”

More than a third of the field failed to finish on the course known as The Ice River. After one fall, the race was slightly delayed while course workers searched for a loose ski that had become buried in the snow.

The 24-year-old Odermatt has won four of the five giant slalom races this season on the World Cup circuit and he leads the discipline standings as well as the overall standings. If he holds his lead in the second run, it would be his first gold medal in his first Olympics after finishing in seventh place in the downhill and failing to finish the super-G.

Odermatt has also never won a world championship medal in two appearances but won five golds at the junior worlds in 2018.

Both Brennsteiner and Faivre are also seeking their first Olympic medals. The 30-year-old Brennsteiner has never won a World Cup race but had two third-place finishes in giant slalom last year.

“I’m in the mix,” Faivre said. “I very much want to put everything into the fight on the second run and not to have any regrets. If that brings a medal, I’ll be the happiest man.

“If I have no regrets and there are better performances than mine, I’ll simply accept it despite the frustration.”

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