The weather has not cooperated with the parallel slalom - both during yesterday's qualifications and today's finals, it was nasty with fog and heavy snowfall, however the head-to-head duels went off and thanks to continuous course preparation, were pretty exciting.
Nicolas Huet from France went into the race as the defending Parallel Slalom World Champion who is also leading the current parallel World Cup standings. After a bad crash in the giant slalom race on Monday when he hurt his shoulder, he skipped the parallel giant slalom in order to focus on today's race and his decision paid off.
"I am super satisfied," Huet said. "My riding was very good and I kept believing in myself."
With only the 14th fastest time, he just managed to make it as one of the 16 finalists. Markus Ebner from Germany was the first to experience Huet's strength and thereafter the Frenchman beat Austria's Werner Ebenbauer in the quarterfinals and US rider Anton Pogue in the semi-finals, leaving it all up to France's Mathieu Chiquet, who would face his teammate in the final duel.
Huet won the first run by just 11 hundredths of a second and his rival knew that it was not impossible to make up this time in the second run, but he could not close the gap and the champion kept his title — the first to defend his title so far.
"After my crash in the giant slalom I had to stay away from racing and therefore missed the parallel GS, but this was the right thing obviously since it gave me one more day to recover. Our physiotherapists were looking after me and I did not even think about it when I raced today, but it started to hurt again now. Maybe I won today because I got only 14th place yesterday. If I was among the top it might have happened that I messed it up today. I was hot today and just went out to take it. I really feel grateful that I was that far behind yesterday."
Chiquet has been among the top slalom riders for the past couple of years, but having lacked major results this season he was not considered for a podium here today. "I never made it up to the top this season but I had a perfect feeling today," he said, "and it really went fine for me all the way through. It was maybe also this little piece of luck for Nico that he was faster today but there will be more races to come and I hope we race each other again in any of those finals. I hope this parallel slalom will keep on to be considered although it is not an Olympic discipline but it is at least as spectacular as the (parallel giant slalom)."
Sweden's Daniel Biveson and Pogue faced each other for 3rd place and it was Pogue who finally pulled it together to take the bronze. "It has been some time since I have been up here," he said, "and I really like the fact that it happened here at the Worlds, that's just outstanding, I'm so happy."
Karine Ruby and Isabelle Blanc also made it a French double in the women's race with Ruby taking the gold again and leaving the silver to Blanc, similar to the results in giant slalom on Tuesday. Sitting in 9th place after the qualification, Ruby knocked out Jana Sedova from Slovakia, Russian rider Maria Tikhvinskaja and sent Carmen Ranigler from Italy to the small final for 3rd place.
The final duel against Blanc was close and Ruby only had the advantage by six hundredths of a second after the first run in the final duel. Blanc looked very strong and ready to take revenge for the giant slalom, but she finally had to leave it to Ruby.
"It is always hard to race against Isabelle," Ruby said, "she is so strong and I made big mistakes very often so I am glad I won today. Both wins are great, but I still like this one a bit more since parallel racing is very important with regard to the Olympics although it was not a parallel GS."
Blanc was disappointed to lose the gold to Ruby for the second time within a week's time. "It is too bad that it is the same situation in that short period of time," she said. "It was hard in the beginning but I got more and more confident. Facing Karine in the finals is always something special — we are both good riders and we've know each other for a long time now. I think we both had our best runs in the finals and it was to her advantage again, but second place is a good result, it just hurts that the same happened again..."
Carmen Ranigler faced Sandra Farmand from Germany in the small final and finally claimed the bronze. "I do not know what to say," Ranigler stated, "my best result in slalom has been a fifth place so far so I did not expect this to happen at all, it is just great."
The halfpipe qualification is tonight and tomorrow morning, and the medals will be awarded tomorrow afternoon.
— Britta Semmler, MountainZone.com Correspondent
