The German slalom riders around the recently strong Lena Dürr experienced a pitch-black evening at the night race in Courchevel.
While the Slovakian Petra Vlhova raced to her second victory of the season in France in the last race before the Christmas break, none of the four DSV starters made it to the second round – for Dürr, third in the World Championships, the evening was over after around 30 seconds.
The German top rider from SV Germering threaded into the middle section of the Eclipse slope in the first run, breaking Dürr’s streak of top results this winter. The 32-year-old took second, third and fourth place in the first three World Cup slaloms of the season.
Beijing Olympic champion Vlhova won the duel between the world’s two best slalom runners against Sochi Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin and was ultimately 24 hundredths ahead of the World Cup record winner (92 wins) from the USA, who was still leading after the first round. Both now have two wins this season in slalom. Katharina Troupe from Austria came third – but with a huge gap of 2.06 seconds to Vlhova.
For the other German starters alongside Dürr, the final stop was either during or after the round. Emma Aicher also joined in after a good split, Andrea Filser failed to score the first goal, Jessica Hilzinger was 33rd, 13 hundredths too slow for the final of the best 30.