KRANJSKA GORA, Slovenia, 12 Mar: Olympic champion Marco Odermatt capped what he called \u201ca perfect season\u201d by securing his second straight World Cup title in giant slalom Sunday.
\nThe Swiss skier won the penultimate GS of the season, beating his only rival for the GS title before the race, Henrik Kristoffersen, by 0.32 seconds.
\nOdermatt extended his lead over the Norwegian to 160 points in the GS standings, locking up the title with only 100 points still at stake at the season-ending race next Saturday.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s crazy, I can\u2019t really believe that,\u201d Odermatt said. \u201cIt was another battle today in the second run. I made my mistakes, just before the flats, I thought \u2018oh, that\u2019s going to be tight\u2019 so I risked it all and it worked out.\u201d
\nOdermatt won a GS on the same hill Saturday and triumphed in six of the nine giant slaloms he started this season.
\nOdermatt earlier successfully defended his overall title, while also winning the super-G globe and world titles in GS and downhill.
\n\u201cIf you don\u2019t call this a perfect season, then when would you do so?\u201d the Swiss standout asked.
\nOdermatt has gathered 1,826 points and is closing in on the 23-year-old men\u2019s record for most World Cup points in a single season \u2013 2,000, set by Austrian great Hermann Maier in the 1999-2000 season.
\nAfter Sunday\u2019s race, he draw praise from his rivals, as third-place Alexis Pinturault called Odermatt\u2019s season \u201csensational\u201d and compared him with Austrian record eight-time overall champion Marcel Hirscher.
\n\u201cA bit like Marcel in the past, winning everywhere, in different disciplines, and also very strong in the big events like world championships and Olympic Games,\u201d the Frenchman said about Odermatt.
\nKristoffersen, however, thought he could close the gap to Odermatt next year, at least in GS.
\nHe is a little bit better at the moment but we get closer and closer,\u201d the Norwegian said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like it was with Marcel and Ted (Ligety) in the past. For two years, Ted was always ahead, then came Marcel. So let\u2019s see what happens next season.\u201d
\nRacing in sunny and warm conditions on the Podkoren 3 course, Odermatt built on his first-run lead of 0.28 seconds as he overcame a mistake halfway through his run and nearly lost his advantage.
\nHowever, he gained time again with a gutsy final section.
\nPinturault was 0.70 behind in third and fourth-place home favorite Zan Kranjec was already more than 1.6 seconds off the pace.
\nThe World Cup finals in Soldeu, Andorra, start with a downhill Wednesday.
\nOnly the slalom title is still vacant, with the top four racers separated by less than 100 points. The slalom is the last race of the season, next Sunday. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KRANJSKA GORA, Slovenia, 12 Mar: Olympic champion Marco Odermatt capped what he called \u201ca perfect season\u201d by securing his second straight World Cup title in giant slalom Sunday. The Swiss skier won the penultimate GS of the season, beating his only rival for the GS title before the race, Henrik Kristoffersen, by 0.32 seconds. Odermatt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}