Paris (AFP)

Alexis Pinturault, in the middle of a fight for the big crystal globe, participates on Wednesday in Zagreb in his 100th World Cup slalom, a discipline that has given him mixed feelings since the start of his career.

A versatile skier, Pinturault has already won in five disciplines (super-G, giant, slalom, combined and parallel).

Very comfortable as a giant (15 wins), untouchable in combined (10 wins, but very few races to go), slalom is naturally its second strong discipline, without the results always following.

"My most important slalom is my first victory in Val d'Isère in December 2012, which was also my first victory in France, following a return from injury", he notes in the satisfaction department.

In 99 starts (counting only the pure slaloms, not the parallel slaloms or the City events), Pinturault has been on the podium eight times for three victories, including two in Val d'Isère.

He has 17 Top 5 and 41 Top 10, but also 39 races completed out of points (a large part at the start of his career) in this pure technical discipline, where the slightest mistake can lead to going off the track.

- "I find pleasure" -

In comparison, the Austrian grandmaster Marcel Hirscher with the eight big globes of world No. 1, renowned for his consistency, had gone wrong only 22 times in 114 starts (34 wins).

"Slalom for me is a discipline where I experienced a lot of waste, I lacked consistency, especially during the period when we had focused on super-G four or five years ago , I found myself less technically, I was blunted a bit, "said Pinturault.

Last winter, his three runs in less than a month in Wengen, Kitzbühel and Chamonix, while he was on the podium each time, may have brought him regrets.

All the more so since he ended up losing the general classification by 54 points against the Norwegian Aleksander Aamodt Kilde (a 3rd place brings 60 points).

"It's a discipline where I have found pleasure for some time," said the French, on the other hand, who has climbed the podium five times since January 2019 after five years of famine.

And it is precisely since he regained an excellent level in the most contested discipline of alpine skiing, that he finds himself at the forefront of the general classification (2nd in 2019 and 2020).

- Regularity -

"He is a boy who has all the qualities required for slalom, including explosiveness, he is capable of being one of the best", analyzes the director of the France team David Chastan.

"It took a long time to stabilize even if even today it does not always have the necessary consistency".

"In his very busy schedule, it was sometimes difficult to find room for him to add slalom sessions, and we must not forget that he encountered two phenomena with Hirscher and Kristoffersen (52 wins between them)", recalls the boss of the France team.

"If he manages to be consistent in the Top 5 of the slalom it will be the key to the general classification, knowing that he has a second key with the super-G", adds Chastan.

In Zagreb, a classic on the calendar which launches a traditionally busy month of January in slalom (seven races), Pinturault also celebrates at 29 his "11th birthday" in slalom, which he had discovered at the highest level in the Croatian capital in January 2010.

The program of the Zagreb stage:

Wednesday January 6: slalom, 1st round at 12.15 p.m., 2nd round at 3.30 p.m.

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