Another triumph for Braathen as Odermatt stumbles

Seven days after winning the slalom in Val d'Isère, Norway's Lucas Braathen wasn't ready to step off the top of the podium.

"Winning is like a drug, you just need more of it," the 22-year-old Braathen said after claiming victory in the Alta Badia giant slalom on Sunday by just two hundredths of a second over teammate Henrik Kristoffersen.

In third place after the first run, Braathen overcame some mistakes in the mid-section of his second run to hold the green light from top to bottom, and then watched as Kristoffersen and first-run leader Zan Kranjec of Slovenia couldn't beat his time.

Kranjec fell to fifth, allowing Swiss superstar Marco Odermatt to sneak onto the podium in third and gain 60 valuable points in his quest for the overall World Cup crystal globe.

But the day belonged to Braathen, who has dreamed of winning on the famous Gran Risa piste since childhood.

"It's incredible," he said. "Growing up, watching Alta Badia as a kid, it's one of the favourites, for sure, it's arguably the coolest giant slalom slope in the world.

"I can't believe I'm victorious here. It's unbelievable, I'm going to remember this day forever."

In dethroning Odermatt and besting Kristoffersen, Braathen joined those two as the only men to have won a World Cup giant slalom race in the last two seasons.

He also joined Kristoffersen and France's Alexis Pinturault as the only active male skiers to win a World Cup slalom and giant slalom race in the same season.

Kristoffersen, who has achieved that feat three times, vented his frustration in the finish area after just falling short but was more philosophical after the race.

"Of course when you are two-hundredths behind you are allowed to be frustrated," he said. "This is racing, we all want to win."

A gruelling week of downhill skiing in Val Gardena seemed to have caught up with Odermatt as a tired-looking first run saw him languishing in ninth place, 1.42 seconds behind Kranjec.

In recovering to post a strong second run and finish third, he became the third man to reach 11 consecutive World Cup giant slalom podiums after ski racing legends Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden (22 straight) and Marcel Hirscher of Austria (18).

"I wasn't sure if this (podium) will happen today again after the first run," said Odermatt, who had won the last three World Cup giant slaloms dating back to last season.

"It was difficult for me to find the right speed in the first run even if I had the perfect slope and in the second run, even if the slope was way more difficult — dark, bumpy — I somehow managed to always put the ski down to the finish.

"Today (showed) once again that the Gran Risa is the hardest GS in the world."

Away from the podium, Andorra's Joan Verdu posted the fastest time of the second run to record a career-best finish of 12th, bettering his only previous top 30 result at World Cup level of 17th in a giant slalom in Kranjska Gora last March.

Skiing third in the second leg, Verdu took advantage of a clean track to take the lead, and then watched as the next 16 skiers failed to dislodge him despite some of them starting with a first-run advantage over him of nearly two seconds.

After the thrills of Sunday's race, the world's top giant slalom skiers will return for another shot on the Gran Risa on Monday, with Kristoffersen warning the field that he can go one better.

"It was nowhere near perfect (on Sunday), so it's possible to ski a lot faster for sure," he said.