At the night slalom in Madonna di Campiglio, Linus Straßer once again failed to get past a midfield position. Victory goes to France.
At the finish line, Linus Straßer lowered his head, took a breath and finally buried his helmet between his gloves. Then he shook his head. The picture revealed quite quickly: the strongest German slalom rider only managed a mediocre start in the all-important slalom month of January.
The Munich native finished 14th in the night slalom in Madonna di Campiglio on Wednesday evening. It’s not a real step forward for him in what has been a difficult season so far. He therefore had nothing to do with the exciting decision in the final – instead, under the floodlights of the Canalone Miramonti, the Frenchman Clement Noel secured victory ahead of the Finn Eduard Hallberg (0.12 seconds behind) and his compatriot Paco Rassat (+ 0.37), who went from 16th place to third.
Men’s slalom guarantees excitement – even at the Olympics
There was also a new winner in the fifth race of the season. Nothing is currently as exciting as the slalom in the men’s Ski World Cup. BR winter sports expert Felix Neureuther currently sees 20 different drivers who can reach the podium, as he revealed during the night slalom. These are exciting prospects for the Olympic slalom on February 16th.
Neureuther’s former teammate Straßer, the 2025 World Cup bronze winner, is one of these drivers. As in the previous season, he had a difficult start to the winter and is still looking for his best form after several midfield placements. He now hoped for an improvement in Trentino.
But while Straßer managed the first run quite well with an intermediate seventh place, he made a few too many mistakes in the second run. “When you realize that you can actually talk to the audience because you drive past them so slowly: That hurt…” he said about a mistake in the second round on the BR microphone.
In the video: The night slalom in the Summary
After Material change: Will Straßer be able to turn things around in the slalom month of January?
Straßer’s change of material before the season still doesn’t seem to be really paying off – at least from the outside. However, the 33-year-old reassured: “I’ve worked hard for this over the last few weeks with my trainer and my service man. We’re on the right track.”
Just in time for January, the month of the big slalom classics, things should now go up. In the next few weeks, Adelboden, Wengen, Kitzbühel and Schladming will be competing in the men’s Alpine Ski World Cup. A year ago, the ski lion from TSV 1860 Munich took sixth place in Madonna, and in the following slalom in Adelboden he was fourth – and in previous years he had proven with victories in Kitzbühel and Schladming that January is his month. So the signs should be right.
Finn Hallberg was surprisingly ahead at half-time
In Madonna, an exciting finale was already in sight after the first round on Wednesday. There was just 0.65 seconds between the surprising first place Hallberg, who started the race with start number 21, and the eleventh place finishers Lucas Pinheiro Braathen from Brazil and Laurie Tyler from Great Britain. Straßer was seventh, 0.41 seconds behind Hallberg, the eventual winner Noel was third at halftime, 0.23 seconds behind.
Such close distances are typical for the Canalone Miramonti in Madonna di Campiglio, but are completely atypical for the entire slalom year. And thanks to such exciting racing, they whet the appetite for more in this all-important slalom month, just before the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in February. With a possibly resurgent Linus Straßer.
In the video: The 1st round of the Madonna di Campiglio night slalom in the re-live
Source: Blickpunkt Sport January 7th, 2026 – 8:45 p.m
