Levi, Finland – Austria’s Marcel Hirscher, last winter’s overall and slalom World Cup champion, earned the wire-to-wire win in Sunday’s slalom in Levi to mark his 10^th straight slalom podium.

Fellow Austrian Mario Matt was second ahead of Henrik Kristofferson, who posted the first World Cup slalom podium for Norway since 2004.

Park City, Utah’s Olympic gold medalist, Ted Ligety, who cracked open the 2014 Audi FIS Alpine World Cup season with a stunning victory in Soelden, Austria last month, finished a respectable 11^th on Sunday in the tour’s first slalom. Sitting 24^th after the opening lap, the 2013 triple World Champion used a light touch on the top of the Levi Black race hill and then hammered the short steep middle section to post the sixth fastest final run time to advance by 13 spots.

“Levi’s a drag race,” Ligety explained. “It’s the easiest course on the World Cup by far so the margins are super tight and the little mistakes cost you a ton of time. It makes it difficult to be one of the fastest guys because you really pay when you are a little bit off.

“I wouldn’t say that either run was all that impressive,” he admitted, “but second run I skied a little bit more like I should be skiing from run to run. But it’s still far from what I need to be doing in slalom. I need to be scoring in the top five to top three. I need to up it if this is going to be a meaningful route to getting me enough points (to win the overall World Cup title). I guess it’s not a horrible day to start out the slalom season.”

In other American results, Colby Granstrom and David Chodounsky finished just outside the first run top 30. Will Brandenburg and Nolan Kasper also started but did not make the final.

Canada’s Mike Janyk earned a 20^th-place finish for his country’s best result on Sunday.  Starting 27^th, the 31-year-old from Whistler, B.C., did just enough in a tight first run to advance and then laid down the 17^th-fastest second run of the day to move up the leaderboard. Canadian  veterans Paul Stutz, Julien Cousineau and Brad Spence did not qualify for the second run, while young gun Phil Brown did not finish his run.

Hirscher now has a slight 36-point edge on Ligety in the overall standings going into the North American World Cup swing, with a downhill and super G in Lake Louise, Canada, followed by the famed Audi Birds of Prey race week Dec. 6-8 in Beaver Creek, Colo., home of the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships. Ligety will prepare for the back-to-back speed series by training at the U.S. Ski Team Speed Center at nearby Copper Mountain.

OFFICIAL RESULTS
FIS Alpine Ski World Cup
Levi, Finland – Nov. 17, 2013
Men’s Slalom