Norway’s Svindal wins World super-combined

Aksel and his dad celebrating on Monday night. Photo: Aftenposten.

VAL D’ISERE, France, Feb. 9 (UPI) — Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal won the gold medal in the men’s super-combined Monday at the world Alpine skiing championships in France.

The veteran racer won the downhill portion of the two-stage event and then held on in a precarious slalom run to win the overall event with Julien Lizeroux of France in second and Croatia’s Natko Zrncic-Dim third.

Svindal finished with a combined time of 2 minutes, 23 seconds. Lizeroux’s time was 2:23.09 and Zrncic-Dim was clocked at 2:24.58. Bode Miller of the United States, who was second after the downhill, failed to finish the slalom.

The downhill course at Val d’Isere was shortened due to bad weather, giving the stronger slalom skiers, such as Svindal, an advantage. Lizeroux, in fact, improved from 20th after the downhill to silver-medal status, thanks to a superb slalom run that had him in the lead for a time. 

Source: www.upi.com