Vidal retires after break

French ski team technical director Gerard Rougier said Vidal may need surgery.

After a career peppered with injury and bad-luck, it is cruelly ironic that Vidal's time in the sport should end this way.

"I was skiing for fun to prepare myself," he explained after the unfortunate incident. "I was feeling really good. But on the second descent I hit a hole on the giant slalom piste. I felt that there was a problem with my arm. I told myself, 'This is not possible'. I continued the descent but soon realised that I could no longer move my arm."

The Frenchman had recently been showing the kind of form which saw him lead a memorable French gold-silver double in the Salt Lake City slalom four years ago.

Last month, Vidal won a World Cup slalom race at Kitzbuehel, and in the build up to Saturday's Olympic slalom, he was talking up the possibility of defending his title and being joined on the podium by compatriot Jean-Baptiste Grange, the promising youngster who set the best time in the second run of the men's combined slalom last week.

"I really had everything that was necessary to be amongst the best," Vidal lamented. "What's more, I was due to wear bib number two. All the ingredients were there for me to do something special. But destiny had a different plan. Jean-Noël Augert injured himself just before Sapporo, like me. It's funny, but that's life. I wanted to finish my career at Are, tranquilly, after the World Cup finals. But with this injury, it's at least 45 days out.

"So, my career ends thanks to this broken arm sustained on my birthday."

The reference to former French slalom champion - and Vidal's cousin - Augert is apt. Like Vidal, Augert was enforced to end his career in a similar fashion in 1972 after injuring his thigh one month after winning in Kitzbuehel and on the eve of the men's Olympic slalom final at Sapporo.

History repeats itself - and on more levels than it seems. The Turin Games might have been a triumph for the French outsiders - Antoine Deneriaz, Florence Bavarel-Robert and Joel Chenal, to name a few - but for defending champions it has proved a nightmare. Look at the sad example of Carole Montillet, the defending downhill champion, whose heavy crash in training ended her hopes of competitive participation in what should have been a touching career swansong.