Sawt Falasteen - Austria's Schwarz fastest in first leg of world giant slalom

Schwarz, who won alpine combined silver last week, clocked 1min 19.47sec down a super-icy L'Eclipse piste in his bid to become the first Austrian since Marcel Hirscher to win the discipline in 2017. Austria are also seeking their first gold of these world champs.

Newly-crowned world downhill champion and Olympic giant slalom gold medallist Marco Odermatt of Switzerland was second, at 0.58sec.

Slovenia's Jan Kranjec (+0.76), who won silver behind Odermatt at last year's Beijing Games, was the only other skier to get within 1sec of Schwarz.

Norway's Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, winner of two silvers in Courchevel, skied out and France's defending world champion Mathieu Faivre finished 3.97sec off the pace.

Faivre's teammate Alexis Pinturault, who won gold in the alpine combined and bronze in the super-G, was 2.48sec down on Schwarz.

"I tried to charge, but I don't know how many days I've had on ice -- it's not many," said Kilde.

"It's so icy and also so turny. If you miss one gate, it's really easy to lose the line and when you lose the line it's hard to get into it and that's what happened, I had no chance.

"That's how it is when the set is so turny, the specialists hit a perfect run and they can nail it, but there's only two of them and the rest are struggling and are far behind. It'd be fun to see a tighter race and possible for others to ski fast."

Pinturault added: "It was a tough run with very little light, a testing course set.

"I was good out of the start hut, but was caught out by a change in snow conditions that cost me a lot of time.

"It looks tricky for gold, but a podium spot is possible. I'll give my best and we'll see what that heralds."

Kilde was also full of praise for girlfriend Mikaela Shiffrin, who won gold in the women's giant slalom on Thursday despite having split from long-time coach Mike Day just 24 hours beforehand.

"Incredible, so mentally strong, we've seen it once again," Kilde said of the American, whose victory was a record-equalling seventh world title in the modern era.

"She just shows people they can say whatever they want, but she will still deliver and everything that happens doesn't stand in her way.

"She's unstoppable," he said, with Shiffrin scheduled to wrap up her world champs in her favoured slalom discipline in Meribel on Saturday.

D.AbuRida--SF-PST