Worley Bridges Nine-Year Gap For France With Win

Worley skied a fearless second leg to win 0.28 seconds ahead of Finn Tanja Poutiainen, while Austria`s Elisabeth Goergl was third.

Teenager Tessa Worley bridged a nine-year gap for French skiing when she won her maiden World Cup victory in a giant slalom on Saturday.

Worley, 19, skied a fearless second leg to win in two minutes 12.86 seconds, 0.28 seconds ahead of Finn Tanja Poutiainen, while Austria's Elisabeth Goergl was third.

Favourite Denise Karbon, the giant slalom World Cup champion last season and fastest in Saturday's first leg, finished 15th after a bad mistake near the bottom of the second run.

Worley's victory was the first by a Frenchwoman in a giant slalom since Regine Cavagnoud's 1999 victory in Copper Mountain. Cavagnoud died in a training crash in 2001.

The last victory by a French female skier in any discipline dated back to 2005 when Ingrid Jacquemod won a downhill in Santa Caterina.

"It means very much to me," said Worley, the daughter of a French mother and an Australian father who spent most of her childhood in New Zealand.

"It is very important, especially this year," she added.

France will host this season's Alpine ski world championships in February in Val d'Isere, not far from Worley's home resort of Le Grand Bornand.

Worley, whose best World Cup result to date was fifth in Soelden last year, was only sixth after the first run but she produced a tremendous performance in the afternoon.

The result was compensation for her disqualification from the Soelden giant slalom a month ago because her skis were too long.

Overall World Cup champion Lindsey Vonn again proved her increasingly versatility with fourth place in front of her home crowd despite having injured her knee in training.

The American was a surprise winner of the slalom in Levi, Finland, two weeks ago.

Austria's Nicole Hosp, winner of the overall World Cup in 2007, straddled a gate and lost a ski as she was leading in the first run. Her compatriots Andrea Fischbacher and Michaela Kirchgasser also went out in the first run.

Swede Anja Paerson, twice a world champion in the discipline, lost more than two seconds in the morning leg, and eventually finished joint 20th.

Austria's Kathrin Zettel, the winner in Soelden, had to be content with fifth place this time, more than a second off Worley's pace.

The Aspen programme continues with a slalom on Sunday.