The fifth Alpine World Cup race of the past week brought a nice holiday present for Swiss Daniel Yule – really, Yule? – who won his first career World Cup race.
The Slalom event was expected to be a showcase for Austria’s World Cup dominator, Marcel Hirscher, and he took the lead immediately in the first run and looked ready for another win. But he had all kinds of trouble at the top of the second run and posted a horrific, 26th-place finish on the run and ended up in 26th place overall.
In the meantime, Yule stood fourth after the first run and was steady, with an aggressive attitude on the second run with the third-best time. That left him at 1:38.34, 0.34 seconds ahead of Austria’s Marco Schwarz, giving Yule his medal in 11 months and his fourth career World Cup medal.
Yule’s victory snaps a streak of five straight Slalom wins by Hirscher.
Nevertheless, Hirscher still has a 620-352 lead in the overall World Cup points standings. Summaries:
FIS Alpine World Cup
Madonna di Campiglio (ITA) 22 December 2018
(Full results here)
Men’s Slalom: 1. Daniel Yule (SUI), 1:38.34; 2. Marco Schwarz (AUT), 1:38.68; 3. Michael Matt (AUT), 1:38.84; 4. Dave Ryding (GBR), 1:38.99; 5. Giuliano Razzoli (ITA), 1:39.42.