On Tuesday, the first and only training for the two downhill races on the Salsong took place in Val Gardena/Gröden. Under excellent external conditions, the French athlete Nils Allegre surprisingly set the best time.

Allegre put the ideal conditions of the slope to perfect use and managed to take first place with the high starting number of 53. A look at the statistics makes clear just how surprising Allegre’s achievement is: the 28-year-old has never made it to the podium in the World Cup and has never finished higher than eleventh in his four downhill starts in Val Gardena/Gröden so far.

Just behind Allegre, Italy's Mattia Casse – despite a run that was anything but flawless – finished in second place. The "Azzurro" was just five hundredths slower than Allegre. With the Norwegian Markus Nordgaard Fossland and the Italian Federico Simoni, two other rather unknown athletes made it to the third place simultaneously. Fossland and Simoni both have never finished in the points area in a World Cup race and were just 41 hundredths behind #1 at the finish.

Top favorite Kilde keeps a low profile

While other outsiders, such as the French brothers Nils and Sam Alphand, took front positions, top favorite Aleksander Aamodt Kilde did not show his cards in today’s training. The Norwegian, who is still unbeaten in the downhill races this season, finished the training run in 14th place.

His biggest rival, Marco Odermatt, even had to settle for 56th place. South Tyrol's speed aces were also not among the very fastest in today’s downhill training. Veteran Christof Innerhofer from Gais came in 25th, 1.40 seconds behind; Florian Schieder from Kastelruth lost 1.73 seconds and came in 35th. The powerhouse from Ulten, Dominik Paris, finished right behind Schieder in 37th place.

The complete results list of today’s downhill training is available here.