It became a triumphant day for the Austrian snowboarders in Limone Piemonte: Heidi Neururer and Manuel Veith (both AUT) took their career-first parallel giant slalom wins as the Italian winter sport resort debuted as a NOKIA FIS Snowboard World Cup host. In the ladies' final, the 28-year-old reigning parallel slalom World Champion successfully competed against the 2007 parallel giant slalom gold medallist Ekatarina Tudigescheva from Russia. With the victory, Neururer also grew her lead in the World Cup lead to 900 points ahead of Nicolien Sauerbreij (NED, 1.700), who had to accept defeat against Italy's Carmen Ranigler in the battle for third.

Bulgarian national snowboard competitor Alexandra Jekova was ranked 14-th in Limone Piemonte's PGS

On the men's side, Manuel Veith surprised the entire Alpine snowboarding elite by not only jumping on the podium for the first time but also by taking his first ever World Cup victory. After the 22-year-old rider from Schladming had eliminated Patrick Bussler (GER), Simon Schoch (SUI) and later on, the third-ranked Matthew Morison (CAN), he showed nerves of steel in the final against Daniel Biveson, too: “I was lucky against Simon (Schoch) but I also rode quite constantly today.” Remarkably, in the big final, he caught a gap of 28 hundredths of a second at the very end of the course.

Daniel Biveson wasn't too disappointed either since he took the lead in the World Cup for the first time in his eleven-year career: “That's so cool. I knew that I had it after Morison had beat Mathieu Bozzetto in the small final.” The Swede now sits on the top of the ranking with 2.000 points and a small lead over the former leader Bozzetto (FRA, 1.950).

Heidi Neururer was all smiles as she was able to get rid of a ‘ban': “Before, I was always the slalom queen and nobody expected me to win a parallel giant slalom. Today, a dream came true.”

FIS news
10.12.2007