The dozen in the “Giant” are full – and the historic 13 is already there: exceptional ski racer Marco Odermatt has celebrated his twelfth giant slalom World Cup victory in a row and is threateningly heading towards the record set by the great Ingemar Stenmark, who once triumphed in 14 giant slalom races in a row had.
The Swiss Odermatt, who is already the overall World Cup winner and winner of the giant slalom crystal ball, stormed to the top in Aspen/Colorado after finishing third in the first round.
He now has 13 victories this season – no man has achieved more; only the Swede Stenmark (1979) and the Austrians Hermann Maier (2001) and Marcel Hirscher (2018) have recorded as many in World Cup history.
“It’s crazy. I knew I had to attack,” said Odermatt, who was literally flying towards the finish after a mistake at the start of the second run in the lower part. Ultimately he won by 0.34 seconds ahead of his compatriot Loic Meillard, with Norwegian Timon Haugan third (+0.58).
As the best German, parallel world champion Alexander Schmid took twelfth place, a good two seconds behind the dominant Odermatt. Fabian Gratz in 25th place (+5.22) and Anton Grammel from Kressbronn in 27th place (+12.00) got a few more World Cup points.
Odermatt can still do more in a season for the history books: there are still giant slaloms on the program in Kranjska Gora and Saalbach-Hinterglemm, and the 26-year-old has also long been a winning rider in downhill and super-G – here will be the World Cup finals in Saalbach -Hinterglemm still driven.