CHAMONIX, France (AP) — Swiss skier Daniel Yule staged an unprecedented comeback to win a men’s World Cup slalom Sunday, less than four hours after he thought his race was over.
Believing that his error-prone first run wouldn’t be enough to qualify for the second leg, Yule started preparing to go home.
But he did qualify as the last racer and was left with 1.93 seconds to make up on leader Clement Noel, and then took advantage of a deteriorating course in spring-like conditions to become the first skier to win a World Cup race from 30th place after the opening run.
“Absolutely incredible. I got to say, I got really lucky staying 30th after the first run. But then I managed to ski an amazing second run,” Yule said. “Wow, wow, it’s just unbelievable. It was a long way down here but a nice one.”
His teammate Loic Meillard came closest, trailing Yule by 0.16 seconds as he improved from fifth to second place. First-run leader Clement Noel dropped to third, 0.18 off the lead.
No skier, male or female, has won a World Cup event before after finishing the opening run in 30th, the last position that allows a racer to start in the second run.
Yule beat the previous best mark set by Lucas Braathen. The Norwegian skier, who isn’t competing this season, went from 29th place to victory at a slalom in Wengen two years ago.
“I had already packed my bags and I was ready to go back to the hotel,” Yule said. “But then I got the opportunity to ski the second run, and I thought: OK, it’s happened before, it’s warm weather, you have a perfect track, we can maybe go and fight for a top 10. But I never dreamed about the win.”
Yule admitted his unique achievement was helped by the rising temperatures for the final run in the early afternoon.
“It’s so warm when the sun came out that the slope kind of suffered a bit more in the second run. So yes, I was definitely lucky, but I also took my chance,” he said after his seventh career slalom victory and first since winning in Kitzbuehel a year ago.
Yule made a big mistake in his first run on the Verte course and was left with almost two seconds to make up on Noel, but then benefitted from his early start in the second run by posting the fastest times in all four sections.
Slowed by the worsening course, most racers lost several tenths of their first-run advantage over Yule at every checkpoint and finished well behind.
Meillard came runner-up to make it a Swiss 1-2 finish.
“Daniel took his chance, I would say, and he showed that it was possible to come back. We can both be happy,” Meillard said.
Noel, the Olympic slalom champion, slammed one of his ski poles against a finish-area safety barrier in frustration after losing his first-run lead.
“It was really difficult at the end, it was really really bumpy, but I think I had the possibly to win this race,” said Noel. “I am confident, I know that I ski fast. Two third places in a row, no big mistakes, I ski quite solid at the moment so that’s really nice.”
The result denied Noel a first win in more than a year. The Frenchman has 10 career victories but only one since winning Olympic gold in Beijing two years ago.
Noel also led after the opening run of a night slalom at Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, last December but ultimately finished runner-up to Marco Schwarz.
That result sent Schwarz top of the overall standings, but the Austrian sustained a season-ending knee injury at a downhill the following week.
On Sunday, Manuel Feller was 0.34 behind in fourth. The Austrian triumphed in three of the seven slaloms so far this season to lead the discipline standings.
Linus Strasser, who won the last two slaloms in Kitzbuehel and Schladming, finished 0.60 behind in 14th.
The slalom in Chamonix, the resort at the base of the Mont Blanc that hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924, was the only World Cup ski race taking place this weekend.
Two men’s downhills in Chamonix and women’s speed races in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, were all canceled amid poor snow conditions.
The men’s World Cup travels to Bulgaria for a giant slalom and a slalom in Bansko next weekend.
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