Neureuther halts Kristoffersen charge at Ski World Cup

 Germany's Felix Neureuther produced a clinical second run to claim his first World Cup slalom victory of the season in Japan on Sunday.

The 31-year-old Bavarian clocked 56.96 seconds in the afternoon for a combined time of one minute, 50.93 seconds, edging out Sweden's Andre Myhrer by just five hundredths. Austrian Marco Schwarz was third in 1:51.17 in unseasonably warm weather.

It was Neureuther's 12th career World Cup victory, 10 of them coming in his specialist slalom discipline.

"It's of course a very, very good feeling," Neureuther told reporters. "It was a tough race today, it started raining in the second run. You guys were so unlucky with the weather, one meter of fresh snow and then it got warm."

Myhrer was pleased to find some form after some patchy recent performances.

"It was a tough day," he said. "First run was good visibility and second run we had really bad visibility and water on the goggles and didn't see much.

"I've been struggling for a while in slalom and I feel happy to be back on the podium. I managed to stay on the track and create some speed anyway and it was almost the top."

Henrik Kristoffersen's hot streak of four successive wins was snapped as the Norwegian could only finish seventh in 1:51.63. But he still increased his lead at the top of the slalom World Cup standings.

Kristoffersen improved to 716 points while his nearest rival, Austria's Marcel Hirscher, was disqualified after straddling a gate on the upper part of the course, leaving him with 500. Neureuther has 323 points.

Germany's Fritz Dopfer, who led after the first run as he had in Saturday's giant slalom, took fourth just under half a second behind Neureuther's combined time.

Hirscher saw his advantage in the overall World Cup standings cut after Sunday's race.

The Austrian still leads with 1,045 but Kristoffersen now has 957, with fellow Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal on 916.
Source: AFP