Alta Badia (Italy) (AFP)

The parallel giant of Alta Badia (Italy) was dominated by the Norwegian Rasmus Windingstad and a surprise podium, as often on this kind of format, while Alexis Pinturault failed to pass the 16th finals and feared s to be injured on Monday.

The day after his 8th place on the "classic" giant, Alexis Pinturault was eliminated by the Swedish Mattias Roenngren in the round of 16, finishing only 25th overall.

Following a fault during the heat, the Frenchman felt pain in the right adductor, but managed to run the second heat of his duel.

"I went to the physiotherapist because of pain in the adductor, but it is difficult to say, it is necessarily a contracture but we hope that it is not more serious as a tear," he said. he indicates.

"I will see in the next few days how the pain develops, then we will decide whether or not to do an ultrasound to know the condition of the muscle. But I do not want to be too alarmist".

Alexis Pinturault is due to travel to Bormio this week to compete in the combined Sunday, a discipline in which he is reigning world champion. He will decide on his presence at Bormio according to the progress of his injury.

- "It's a lottery!" -

The Courchevel skier did a bad job in the general classification by scoring only six points on Monday. Slight consolation, his great Norwegian rival Henrik Kristoffersen finished only 7th Monday (36 points) the day after his victory over the giant "classic".

In the general classification, the Norwegian now has 67 points ahead of the Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr and 77 points over Pinturault.

"The results are not good, I did not have good races but the conditions were far from easy," said Pinturault, who was critical of the organization and the format of the race.

"There was a lot of" waste "with several injuries because the track was not ready at all. There was a lot of amateurism. This parallel format does not delight many people, I think 85% of the skiers "It would be a lottery! Just look at the podiums, the regular athletes in the first places are usually not there, it's not trivial."

The usual favorites out of the game, so these are second knives that shone on the nocturnal parallel giant, a succession of duels on two giant tracks drawn in parallel (from the 16th round) after a qualification disputed earlier in the day.

The Norwegian Rasmus Windingstad won all his confrontations to sign the first victory of his career in the World Cup. He only climbed the podium for the second time after his 2nd place from the giant of Kranjska Gora (Slovenia) in March.

In the final, Windingstad dominated the German Stefan Luitz, more accustomed to honors (8th podium in the World Cup, including two victories).

3rd place went to Austrian Roland Leitinger, who signed the first podium of his career at the highest level at 28 years old.

- Unbalanced profile? -

The final draw was marked by the a priori unbalanced profile of the two courses: three-quarters of the skiers placed on the "red" course (the color of the doors) won over those of the "blue" course.

For the first time, the points won on the parallel giant no longer count for the classification of the giant globe but for a separate classification (two races in this format are planned this season).

Besides Pinturault, the other French did not shine on Monday: the day after his brilliant 2nd place, Cyprien Sarrazin did not pass the qualifications, like Clément Noël, Victor Muffat-Jeandet and Rémy Falgoux.

Thibaut Favrot (10th) and Mathieu Faivre (15th) were eliminated in the round of 16.

© 2019 AFP