Beautiful scenery and a very fast ride: Clement Noël at the start in Gurgl.
Photo: Gabriel Facciotti (AP)
The confidence is there. The skis are running. The competition is left behind. Practically everything is working for Clément Noël at the start of this slalom season. After his victory a week ago in Levi, the Frenchman also distanced himself from his competition by almost a second in the first run of the Gurgl slalom and is now well on his way to his second win of the season.
There are no riders from the top group directly behind the 27-year-old: the Norwegian Atle Lie McGrath (+0.88 seconds) and the Frenchman Steven Amiez (+0.94). The drivers with the low start numbers all lose an excessive amount of time, such as Timon Haugen (+2.26), or are eliminated, like Manuel Feller. The Austrian also failed to finish in his third race of the season.
Loïc Meillard, currently the only Swiss in the top group, was only able to train to a limited extent during the week due to persistent back problems, lost 1.78 seconds to the leader Noël at the finish and then told SRF: “Actually, the feeling after the first run was one Disaster.” At the end of the first run, the Neuchâtel native finished in 14th place.
Mixed Swiss balance sheet
His teammate Tanguy Nef ranked five places better and, as the best Swiss, was able to build on his good performance and Levi’s fifth place after the first run. «It was quite a fight. For the body, the head and the material,” says Nef’s interim conclusion.
Daniel Yule loses a little over two seconds to the leading Frenchman and is in 21st place in the interim rankings. Behind him is Luca Aerni in 23rd place. Ramon Zenhäuser barely made it into the second round in 30th place. The somewhat mixed Swiss performance of the first run is followed by Marc Rochat’s second elimination of the season. The two World Cup returnees Lucas Pinheiro Braathen and Marcel Hirscher also did not make it to the finish.
The second run starts at 1:30 p.m.
Swiss
