The Swiss Marco Odermatt set the best time on Friday in the first giant of Aspen, in the United States, and is heading towards his third consecutive crystal globe in his favorite discipline, in which he is undefeated this winter.
Without knocking out the race as frankly as usual, the world No. 1 is ahead of the Norwegian Alexander Steen Olsen by 12/100th and the Swiss Loïc Meillard by 19/100th, still technically very clean. If he maintains the lead after the second round scheduled for 9:00 p.m. local time, the alpine skiing genius will achieve an eighth victory in as many giants this season, securing the specialty globe even before the last three events.
Marco Odermatt, so far ahead in the general classification that he is already certain of winning a third big globe in a row, is still chasing several records at the end of winter to enter a little more into the history of alpine skiing. With 11 successes this season, all disciplines combined, he can notably improve the total of 13 victories established last year, which he still shares with the Swede Ingemar Stenmark (1979), as well as the Austrians Hermann Maier (2001) and Marcel Hirscher (2018).
The first round was also marked by the retirement of the Austrian Manuel Feller. Surprised and slightly stuck on a change of support, the leader of the slalom ranking – who can win the globe of the discipline on Sunday in the American resort – gave up a few gates further down while holding his back.