French skier Allegre upsets favourites in World Cup super-G for 1st career win

French skier Nils Allegre sped to his first career World Cup victory Saturday as two late starters upset the higher-ranked favorites at a tight super-G on the classic Kandahar course.

Wearing bib 18, Allegre beat Guglielmo Bosca by 0.18 seconds after the Italian finished and spent two minutes hoping for what would have been his maiden win.

Jeff Read of Canmore, Alta., finishes in 20th as top Canadian. Cameron Alexander was 23rd, with James Crawford in 25th.

Allegre and Bosca, both 30-year-old veterans on the Alpine skiing circuit, denied the Swiss team a 1-2 finish. Loic Meillard led season dominator Marco Odermatt by 0.03 after the top-10 ranked super-G racers had completed their runs.

The Frenchman had not finished better than fourth before, most recently at a downhill in Val Gardena last December, when we was bumped off the podium when American racer Bryce Bennett took the victory as a late starter.

"It's a good day, I had a perfect feeling on my ski from the top to the bottom, I feel really confident on it, I can push a lot," Allegre said.

Overall World Cup leader Odermatt's fourth position ended his series of 12 straight super-G podiums, a feat previously only achieved by Austrian great Hermann Maier two decades ago. No male skier has ever had a top-three result in 13 consecutive super-Gs.

"A weird race today with small time differences," Odermatt said. "That's because it was a very, very easy and a short super-G, a simple course. In these conditions you cannot make the difference anywhere."

Allegre continued the strong run by the French team, led by Cyprien Sarrazin, in men's speed events this season.

In his breakthrough speed season, former giant slalom specialist Sarrazin won one downhill in Bormio in December