Odermatt excels in snowy conditions to win giant slalom

Marco Odermatt has owned the giant slalom this season, and now he owns an Olympic gold medal in the event.

The 24-year-old Swiss skier plowed through snow and poor visibility on Sunday to win the men's giant slalom at the Beijing Games.

"I really risked everything in the second run because I wanted not just a medal-I wanted the gold medal," Odermatt said. "It's difficult because you can lose everything, but today it paid off."

It was the first time snow fell during an Alpine skiing race at this year's Olympics and the bad weather conditions caused the second run to be postponed by 1 hour and 15 minutes.

"It was a hard day, with the conditions, with such a long wait between the two runs," Odermatt said. "It was more than five hours for me. It was such a long time to rethink everything, and it was hard to stay focused. I tried to sleep some minutes in between.

"I actually never dreamt about it, but now it still feels like a dream."

Odermatt coped with the conditions and the delay-and a first-run mistake-to post an unofficial combined time of 2 minutes, 09.35 sec. Zan Kranjec of Slovenia took silver, 0.19 sec behind, and world champion Mathieu Faivre of France earned bronze, 1.34 sec behind.

The skiers had been racing and training on artificial snow until the real thing started to fall on Saturday at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Centre. A second women's downhill training run was canceled because of the conditions on Sunday.

It was the first medal in a major championship for Odermatt, who is competing at his first Olympics. He was seventh in Monday's downhill and failed to finish the super-G the following day.

Odermatt has dominated in the giant slalom this season, winning four of the five races on the World Cup circuit to lead the discipline standings as well as the overall standings.

Agencies via Xinhua