Shock wins as Schmid and Tviberg steal inidividual parallel World gold

Alexander Schmid became Germany's first individual world alpine skiing champion since 1989 with victory in the men's parallel at Courchevel Meribel. The 28-year-old beat Austria's Dominik Raschner in the final by 0.91 seconds in a historic feat, while Norway's Timon Haugan beating Austria's Adrian Pertl for the bronze. Ad «It means a lot — I didn’t expect it, and I am so happy to be here with a gold medal, it is just amazing,» said Schmid.

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It’s no risk, no fun, and that was pretty fun." Defending champion Mathieu Faivre of France failed to qualify for the 1/8 finals and home favourite Alexis Pinturault also made an early exit. Maria Therese Tviberg soared to gold in the women's parallel just 24 hours after being ruled out of the mixed parallel team final due to a heavy fall. The 28-year-old from Norway had to watch on as her team narrowly missed out on team gold yesterday but overcame her disappointment and raced to individual gold.

Tviberg, who has never been on a World Cup podium before, beat three-time world champion Wendy Holdener of Switzerland in the final by 0.67 seconds. Thea Louise Stjernesund of Norway backed up yesterday's team silver with bronze in the individual. «After I qualified for the final I cried the whole way up and when I came to the top I was still crying,» said Tviberg.