Kaltschütz

Last year's Giant Slalom World Cup champions, Austrian Stefan Kaltschütz and Italian Margerita Parini, both successfully defended their titles this year. Though both had disappointing finishes in this race, they were able to maintain their points leads to secure the top spots.

Kaltschütz claimed the World Cup two weeks ago when his strongest rival, France's Matthieu Bozzetto, didn't make it to the second run. This all changed today when the Frenchman won the race after tying with his teammate and friend Nicolas Huet, thus finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively in the final Giant Slalom standings.

"It is amazing to win both finals, and having Nico with me on top of the podium today really was something special..."— Matthieu Bozzetto (FRA)

Kaltschütz would have loved to finish the season with a win but looked like he pushed it just a little too much, finishing a distant seventh in today's final race.

"I am glad I made it for the globe again," he said, "and all in all the season turned out pretty well for me. I just needed to work a little more on the slalom, but that must wait until I get back from a three month trip to Peru."

Bozzetto and Huet were stoked, especially because they shared a win after fighting against each other so often.

"It is amazing to win both finals, and having Nico with me on top of the podium today really was something special," Bozzetto said. "This year I could even improve my result from last season with repeating the wins in Parallel and the overall and moving up from third to second in the Giant Slalom. This is just great," he said.

Huet just recently pulled it together in this discipline and almost couldn't believe he took third. "This is special," he said, "if someone would have told me a couple of weeks ago I would not have believed that this may come true, and to share it with Matthieu was another thing. We wanted this for quite a long time, it is great that it finally happened today."

Felix Stadler, of Austria, was another contender for third place in the final Giant Slalom World Cup standings, but after taking a 6th in today's race he placed 4th in the GS standings. However, he made it to third place in the overall World Cup points standings, behind Bozzetto and Huet.

	Margerita Parini

Parini wanted to finish the season with a win, especially racing in her home country. In today's race she almost lost it in the second run and in the end took a 9th place finish.

"It has not been my best season by far," she said, "but I am really happy that I could defend the title. I hope we will have a couple of more steep courses next year since I always have problems on the flatter ones. I need to get more used to parallel racing since I do not want to fail in those races next year with regard to the qualification for the 2002 Olympics."

Sweden's Sara Fischer took her first win today and was relieved to conclude her successful season with such a great result.

"Now I could race some more races," she said, smiling. France's Isabelle Blanc and Karine Ruby took 2nd and 3rd places today with Ruby moving up to 2nd place in the Giant Slalom standings.

Manuela Riegler finished 15th and took 3rd place in the standings, but claimed the overall World Cup ahead of Blanc and Parini. "I'm glad I made it to the podiums in the Parallel, the Snowboard Cross and the Giant Slalom, but the most important for me is the overall."

—Britta Semmler, MountainZone.com Correspondent