Kostelic takes victory

The Olympic silver medalist in the discipline was seventh after the Super-G but stormed down the slalom course to win by over a second.

It was the first World Cup points of the season for the 27-year-old Croat and the triumph was his first on the World Cup circuit since he won a December 2003 slalom in Madonna di Campiglio.

All his previous World Cup wins had been in slalom but Kostelic showed his growing flair for speed in the super-G which replaced the usual downhill because of poor snow cover and a lack of time for downhill training runs after Reiteralm stepped in at short notice as host instead of the French resort of Val d'Isere.

"After the super-G I reckoned I was among the favourites because it was a good run," said Kostelic, whose sister Janica, three times overall World Cup champion, is taking a year out of racing.

"I always try to ski with a sense of feel and so today's (snowy) conditions were perfect for me. It's not so easy for me when the course is hard but when there's snow under the skis then I tend to do better."

The performance of former world junior downhill champion Baumann in just his eighth World Cup race was a huge shock.

The 20-year-old, wearing bib number 54, was ninth after the downhill and then produced the third best slalom time.

Bourgeat, who has won three World Cup slaloms but not been on the podium since 2003/2004, showed a welcome return to form edging out Ted Ligety and Hans Olsson by three hundreths.

It was the Swede's first World Cup top ten while his compatriot Niklas Rainer produced a time of 1:19.38 to lead after the Super-G, only to finish seventh.

Overall World Cup leader Aksel Lund Svindal and defending champion Benjamin Raich made mistakes on a flat slalom and failed to climb up the standings as steeply as usual, ending sixth and tenth respectively.