He was one of the top favourites to win the gold medal in the Alpine Combined and for a second time Alexis Pinturault is the World Champion in the discipline. He won in his home town with two Austrians, Marco Schwarz and Raphael Haaser, completing the podium of the World Ski Championships Alpine Combined in Courchevel-Méribel 2023.
The 31-year-old French skier won the Alpine Combined at the World Championships in Åre in 2019. In Cortina 2021 he won a silver medal in this event.
Pinturault is the third man representing France to win the world title in the Alpine Combined on home snow, after Émile Allais in Chamonix in1937 and Jean-Claude Killy in Grenoble in 1968.
The Frenchman showed a very strong Super-G performance in the morning, setting the best time thanks to a flawless run in a demanding and technic L'Eclipse racecourse. In the second run he based his achievement on a solid perfomance on a heavily twisting slalom course.
"It's a perfect day. A great performance in the Super-G and a good performance in the Slalom, which wasn't easy, especially at the end. It's crazy that I won in the place where I lived. Two years ago in Cortina it was very close between Marco and me. Then he was ahead, and now me. When you're challenged like that, you need a good performance to win", Pinturault said.
Alexis Pinturault is one of the last all-rounder skiers. He has won seven of the last 10 Alpine Combined events on the World Cup. Pinturault won the Alpine Combined Crystal Globe four times (2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020). Since the start of the 2020-2021 season, the Alpine Combined is no longer part of the World Cup calendar.
He returned to the top of the podium for the first time since he won the World Cup Giant Slalom in Lenzerheide in March 2021.
"It's since two years that I have the world championships in Courchevel in my head. Racing the world championships in France is great but when it's your home town, it's something even more special. So I really wanted to give my best here at these world champs, and it started pretty well I would say", Pinturault added.
Marco Schwarz finished in second place 0.10 seconds behind Pinturault. The World Champion at the 2021 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Cortina, missed the gold after making a mistake in the last gates.
“I missed the chance for the gold medal in the last section of the track. But I'm also happy about silver, there were a lot of good competitors at the start. I have my third combination medal, so I'm happy. I'm also super happy with Rapahel and I congratulate Alexis, when you become world champion at home, that's a cool story", said Schwarz.
Raphael Haaser completed the podium in third position thanks to two solid runs. He finished 044 seconds behind Pinturault. He completes a brilliant start of the Alpine World Ski Championships in Courchevel for the Haaser family as sister Ricarda also won bronze yesterday in the Women’s Combined.
"I'm really happy. I wanted to do the slalom solidly, technically clean and not take too many risks. I succeeded. I knew that if I risked senselessly, I would end up with nothing. The fact that Ricarda also has a medal makes it special", Haaser said.
The Austrian Team, which was under severe criticism lately, can breathe a sigh of relief for the time being with 3 medals after the first two events at the Alpine World Ski Championships.
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