Alexis Pinturault is on a roll. Victory in the Alpine Combined has been followed up with a commanding win in the penultimate Giant Slalom of the regular season to move into there lead in the Overall and within six points of Henrik Kristoffersen who now leads the Giant Slalom standings. Filip Zubcic took second in the race to back up his first race win in Naeba, Japan in the last race.
Pinturault laid his cards on the table in the first run to post a lead with an advantage of nine tenths of a second over the rest of the field, lead by Filip Zubcic. The rest of the field looked shell shocked with the deficit that they all faced. Zan Kranjec was over a second off the lead as he tried to keep hold of his red bib for leading the Giant Slalom standings.
The slope at Hinterstoder is almost the polar opposite of the race that it replaced, Val d'Isere, With the snow off the racing line, soft, it was vital for the racers to stay on the racing line to keep the ski heading in the right direction. With the track rutting up, the entry to the turn needed to be smooth and few racers managed to keep the speed.
Pinturault was a class above the rest of the field. Many of the field suffered from the snow softening up and losing time.
With eight to go it was Marco Odermatt, one of the real stars of this season to make the breakthrough, leading the race. Odermatt, already a winner this season in Super G in Beaver Creek, had been in tenth place after the first run and posted the fourth fastest time on the second run to move up the rankings. Odermatt would end up in fourth overall.
Fastest time on the second run was posted by Loic Meillard who had been in 22nd after the first run but with the fastest second run moved top to seventh.
At the start of the season, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde was ranked outside the top thirty GS racers. He used the 400 plus points rule in Soelden to start 31 and now in Hinterstoder he started in the second group of seeds. With his rise in the rankings, the Norwegian has also become a force to reckoned with in the race for the Overall. Kilde finished in sixth just behind Luca di Aliprandini.
Kristoffersen was sixth after the first run and used his experience to dislodge Odermatt from the lead. And there he stayed until Zubcic came down. Kranjec saw his lead in the GS evaporate as he dropped off the pace down in to 13th place!
Could Zubcic make it two wins on the bounce or would Pinturault complete an almost faultless Hinterstoder visit?
There was no stopping the Frenchman and after the race he commented: "Hinterstoder is a very special place for me. I have won four out of six races so far. This weekend has been awesome. That means I am now the favourite for the overall World Cup. I did my best here. We have to wait and see which races will still go ahead despite the Coronavirus," said Alexis Pinturault.
With Head celebrating a second win from the visit to Hinterstoder, Rainer Salzgeber added: "Our Racing Assistant Patrick Wirth told us when we arrived that Alexis was going to bag 250 points here. And he was right. Alexis did a perfect job. You could see that everything was right with the equipment and that he felt good. In the Giant Slalom he showed the way to do it on the upper section. It's great that he has been able to consistently put in his best performance three races in a row," said HEAD Racing Director Rainer Salzgeber.
With the season nearing its culmination, Rossignol head the overall standings for all the brands!
Full results