Loic Meillard scored his first World Cup win with a solid win over Thomas Tumler in the final of the second Parallel GS of the season. Tumler, none of whose adversaries in the three rounds prior to the Final had finished, finished 0.25 seconds back of Meillard. Alexander Schmid outfought Tommy Ford to take third place while Zan Kranjec took fifth.
This was the second of two parallel GS events on the World Cup this year and with Rasmus Windingstad, the winner of the Alta Badia event going out in the early rounds, Meillard's march to the final and winning the event also sees him take the Globe for the discipline.
The qualification round saw some big names crash out including Daniel Yule and Clement Noel along with Charlie Raposo. Raposo had travelled from competing the Europa Cup Giant Slalom in Berchtesgarden on Saturday (he crashed out on the first run) to try and qualify for the knockout rounds.
Gino Caviezel, Manuel Feller, Michael Matt and Albert Popov also failed to make the cut with the top 32 racers advancing to the head to head races.
Qualification had seen two less heralded racers post the fastest times with Giovanni Borsotti setting the fastest combined time ahead of Luca de Aliprandini. Pinturault, Linus Strasser and Simon Maurberger rounded out the top five fastest qualifiers. With the seeding for the main event being decided by where you finished in the qualification round, there were some interesting match ups in the round of 32: The biggest tie was undoubtedly Alexis Pinturault against Mathieu Faivre. Both strong GS racers in the their own right, it was Pinturault who advanced.
A quarter final match up between Pinturault and Kristoffersen was scheduled to happen but neither made it beyond the round of 16 losing to Alexander Schmid and Zan Kranjec as each round was won on the blue course. This saw the fastest two qualifiers also go out. With Kilde advancing on to the final stages, the opportunity to score some valuable points for the overall arose for the Norwegian.
The quarter final between Alexander Schmid and Zan Kranjec through up an interesting conundrum as both racers tied when they crossed the line. The time was exactly the same. When this happens, the decision goes in favour of the racer that has the fastest one run time from any round, in this case it was Schmid and so he advanced to the next round.
A big crash in the second of the quarter finals for Simon Maurberger caused a delay and resulted in Maurberger forfeiting his remaining races to end up in 8th place overall. Kilde would take seventh with Thibaut Favrot sixth.
The Chamonix - Les Houches set up gave the racers plenty to think about with two key rollers that provided thrills and no end of splils. Whether running the race under the lights or during the day is the best timing is up for discussion but the parallel format of racing is a great spectator spectacle and it would be great to see this on the programmes for National Championships as well.
With Meillard taking his first World Cup win, Switzerland scored some good points in the race for the Nations Cup to extend their lead. The win also cemented the position of Rossignol at the top of the overall brand standings on this years World Cup.
Full results