The China Mail - Paris doubles up with super-G victory at World Cup finals

The 36-year-old from the Dolomites coped superbly with the hard-packed snow, rutted after a weekend of racing, to finish his run in 1min 26.81sec.

He edged out Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr, who was third the day before, by 0.07sec. Another Austrian Raphael Haaser was third, 0.38sec behind the winner.

Marco Odermatt, who had long ago wrapped up the overall title and a fourth straight super-G crystal globe, drifted home in 19th, 1.97 seconds behind Paris. It was his worst result in the discipline, since he came 28th in 2022, also at Kvitfjell.

On Saturday, the 28-year-old was seventh in the downhill, where he had already sealed a third successive discipline title.

He has been focusing this week on the giant slalom, where he is not yet certain of a fifth straight globe, at the expense of training for the speed events.

On Tuesday, Odermatt will attempt to hold off Brazilian Olympic champion, Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who grew up racing on the Norwegian slopes, in the final race of the season.

For Paris, who made his World Cup debut in 2008, it was a 26th World cup victory and his eighth on the piste used for the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.

With this weekend's double, the veteran proved he can still beat the world's best.

It follows a stuttering season that had previously delivered only two World Cup podiums and an Olympic bronze medal on home snow, and left him in danger of ending without a victory for the first time since 2012.

K.Leung--ThChM