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Val D'isere, France • Mathieu Faivre led a fierce French challenge on first-run leader Marcel Hirscher of Austria to win a World Cup giant slalom on Sunday.
Faivre secured the fastest second run to beat Hirscher, the five-time defending World Cup overall winner and a Val d'Isere specialist, by 0.49 seconds.
Faivre had 0.01 to make up from the first leg, and the 24-year-old racer's first career World Cup victory denied Hirscher a fifth GS win on this course since 2009.
France team leader Alexis Pinturault was third, trailing 1.11 behind the winner. Teammates Thomas Fanara and Victor Muffat-Jeandet placed fourth and fifth as a noisy crowd roared on the home team.
Hirscher has now lost to two Frenchmen in defense of his season-long giant slalom trophy after being runner-up to Pinturault in the season-opening race at Soelden, Austria.
In his return to racing amid a dispute with Norway's ski federation, Henrik Kristoffersen was eighth, trailing by 2.38.
Kristoffersen, the World Cup slalom winner last season, skipped a slalom at Levi, Finland, last month to protest being blocked from wearing the helmet of a personal sponsor. The dispute is due in court.
Ted Ligety led a five-strong United States challenge in 11th, 2.63 back. Ligety, the Olympic champion in GS, had been the only racer other than Hirscher to win on the Oreiller-Killy course in recent years.
Still, Hirscher leads the overall standings after just five races of the season.
Kjetil Jansrud of Norway had been tied with Hirscher atop the overall standings but did not finish the first run Sunday after winning the downhill and super-G this weekend.