At the end of a very close race, the 2021 world champion beat two Germans, Romed Baumann by 09 hundredths of a second and Andreas Sander by 13 hundredths.
The big favorite, the Norwegian Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, who was already assured of winning the small globe of the discipline, took the 6th place at 30 hundredths.
Marco Odermatt, already assured of winning the general classification, took only 15th place.
With 16 additional points, he reached 1,842 points. He has two races left (a super-G on Thursday and a giant on Saturday) to break the men's points record set 23 years ago by Austria's Hermann Maier (2,000 points).
Switzerland's Marco Odermatt finished 15th in the men's downhill at the Alpine Ski World Cup Finals on March 15, 2023 in Soldeu (Andorra) © CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP
In El Tarter, a village near Soldeu where the technical races will take place, the Frenchman Johan Clarey, Olympic vice-champion of the discipline, competed at the age of 42 in the last race of his career, finishing 12th and best tricolor.
Nils Allègre finished 19th, Adrien Théaux 23rd and Alexis Pinturault 24th.
© 2023 AFP