Industry News
Switzerland’s Daniel Yule wrote skiing history today, Sunday, February 4, 2024, when the Slalom skier skied from 30th place in run 1 to win the Slalom World Cup in Chamonix, France. A FIS Slalom race is held in two runs, with the combined time counting. Only the top 30 fastest skiers from run 1 qualify for run 2. Typically the overall victor will come from within the top five finishers from run 1, rarely someone makes it from the top 10. But today Daniel Yule managed the seemingly impossible: for the first time ever a skier who finished run 1 in the absolute last qualifying spot finished the race with a victory. The previous slalom record for most positions moved from run 1 to run 2 was set by Lucas Braathen in 2022, when the Norwegian skier moved from 29th to win in Wengen, Switzerland.
Run 1
Starting the race today was Austria’s Manuel Feller. Feller currently ranks at the top of the Slalom standings for the 23/24 season. The Austrian set a fast pace for the course with 47.49 seconds but was instantly relegated down a rank by France’s Clement Noel who beat him by 0.40 seconds. Noel ended up having the fastest time for run 1. Switzerland’s hopes were high for Daniel Yule and teammate Loic Meillard, but Yule made some mistakes on the top section of the course, seeing him cross the finish line almost two seconds behind Noel. Meillard meanwhile finished inside the top five, putting him in the pool of most likely candidates for a podium at Chamonix.
Yule admits he feared that he might miss out on qualifying for run 2. “I’d already packed my bags and I was ready to go back to the hotel but then I got an opportunity to ski the second run,” Yule confessed. In the end, the Swiss Slalom specialist qualified for run 2 by just 0.05 seconds in 30th place.
Run 2
Run 2 is conducted in reverse order, meaning Yule went first, while Clement would go last. Yule put down a near-flawless second run. The Swiss ski racer added, “I thought, ‘OK, it’s warm weather, you have a perfect track,’ so we can maybe go and fight for a top 10 or something, but I never dreamt about the win.” And fight he did. He finished the second run with the fastest time by more than half a second, in 47.22 seconds. Due to the warm temperatures at Chamonix, one was certainly expecting the second run to be quite a bit slower than the first.
Yule sat in the leader’s seat in the finish area, watching skier after skier failing to beat his time, and with each skier, his grin grew wider. “Absolutely incredible,” Yule said in an interview after the race, “I’ve got to say I got really lucky staying 30th after the first run, but then I managed to ski an amazing second run. It was a long wait down here (in the leader’s seat), but a nice one.”
When it came to the top five skiers everyone was sure that Yule would be unseated, but neither teammate Loic Meillard nor Clement Noel could beat his time, skiing across the finish line a mere 0.16 seconds and 0.18 seconds respectively behind Yule. Slalom ranking leader Manuel Feller narrowly missed out on a podium, finishing 0.34 seconds behind Yule.
From Team USA only Jett Seymour qualified for run 2. He had skied with bib 37 into an impressive 15th place on his first run. Seymour, unfortunately, could not quite match his performance from run 1 and finished in 28th overall, however still earning his first FIS points of the season. Teammates Luke Winters and Benjamin Ritchie unfortunately recorded DNFs. Winters slid out on the lower half of the course, while Ritchie’s race ended when the skier straddled a gate on the top half of the course.
The Slalom World Cup continues in Bansko, Bulgaria, on February 11. Bansko will also host a Giant Slalom event on February 10.
