Clenched fist, angry cry, the triple winner of the globe of the discipline (2016, 2020, 2022) let his joy burst without even waiting for the passage of the Swiss Loïc Meillard, best time of the first round, whose whole crowd awaited the triumph .
Often placed and rarely a winner, the Valaisan finally fails 20/100th from the winner, for his fourth podium of the season in three different disciplines (slalom, super-G, giant), while the Norwegian Lucas Braathen takes third place at 49 /100th.
"Kristo" wins his 30th World Cup victory - the second highest active men's record behind Alexis Pinturault - and takes control of the specialty in Braathen, ten points ahead of the 22-year-old prodigy.
He erases in passing the cruel disappointment of last year on this same track, when he came out at the very end of the second round after knocking out the first, leaving Braathen to make the best comeback in history to win the race with the 29th time of the first run.
The Swiss Marco Odermatt, who does not compete in the slaloms, remains clearly at the top of the general classification with 340 points ahead of the Norwegian Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, who does not line up between the tight stakes either.
Christmas is reassured
In the gray and unusually mild air of the Bernese Oberland, this very selective slalom, with its incessant movements of the ground and its final wall, offered a strange spectacle and favored the first bibs.
The first round, with its extremely twisty layout on soft snow, forced the skiers to fight harder and harder as they passed, creating considerable gaps, before the thick snowflakes fell on the second.
Under these conditions, the hierarchy changed little between the two passages, even if the Olympic champion of the discipline Clément Noël and the winner of the 2021 globe, the Austrian Marco Schwarz, respectively grabbed one and three ranks to finish in 6th and 7th. squares.
If he has not repeated his double (2019, 2020) on his favorite track, Noël is reassured after having made mistakes six times in his last eight races, and before continuing with the Kitzbühel slalom next Sunday .
Alexis Pinturault, 15th in the super-G on Friday on the neighboring Lauberhorn track, finished 13th at 3 sec 35 from Kristoffersen.
© 2023 AFP