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Odermatt wins career-first World Cup downhill in Wengen / Photo: © AFP
Odermatt wins career-first World Cup downhill in Wengen
Marco Odermatt won the first downhill race of his glittering World Cup career by streaking to victory on the home snow of Wengen on Thursday.
Odermatt, who won downhill and giant slalom golds in last year's World Ski Championships in Courchevel, had previously made 11 World Cup podiums in the ultimate speed discipline.
But there was no mistake in Wengen as the 26-year-old produced a near-faultless run in sunny conditions to win in 1min 43.32sec.
France's Cyprien Sarrazin was second, at 0.58sec, with Norway's Aleksander Aamodt Kilde rounding out the podium (+0.81).
Odermatt's victory was the 30th in his career, 18 having come in the giant slalom and 11 in the super-G.
It also continues the Swiss racer's impressive start to the season, having already notched up four giant slalom victories and one in the super-G.
Those have combined to leave Odermatt atop the overall standings on 836 points, a massive 372pts ahead of Austrian Marco Schwarz, since ruled out for the season with a knee injury. Kilde is in third place, 456pts behind his Swiss rival.
Odermatt has won two consecutive overall World Cup titles as well as Olympic giant slalom gold in Beijing in 2022.
He has the chance of improving his chances of a third straight World Cup title when racing resumes with a super-G on Saturday.
L. Rodrigues--JDB
