Svindal retains title

Aksel Lund Svindal retained his world super combined title while Christof Innerhofer took his third medal of the championships with second place.

Norwegian skier Svindal was over one second faster than Italy's Innerhofer over the combined downhill and slalom legs in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

He was one of the first big favourites to claim gold at the championships, with most of the events so far boasting surprise winners.

Peter Fill made it two Italians on the final podium as he sprung a surprise to secure the bronze medal.

Svindal led Switzerland's Beat Feuz by 0.63 seconds after the downhill portion and held his nerve in the slalom to win with a combined mark of 2:54.51.

Feuz looked set for a medal but straddled a gate near the end, while Innerhofer and Fill's runs threatened to give Italy a one-two finish.

Innerhofer had already won gold in the Super-G and bronze in the downhill, so even though he was eventually overhauled, he added to his impressive medal tally.

Several skiers, including Bode Miller, Ted Ligety and Silvan Zurbriggen failed to finish the slalom course, with Miller tripping up just seconds out of the gate.

Ivica Kostelic, who has been dominant in super-combined events during the World Cup season, skipped the event to instead concentrate on the season-long competition.

Caught the slalom leg, and Svindal showed marvelous composure after Innerhofer had put some serious pressure on him by producing a fine run. Thoroughly deserved win.

Feel sorry for Benny Raich, probably my favourite skier, who produced an excellent slalom run, which was however only enough for fourth place. Just left himself with too much to do after the descent I guess.

As for Innerhofer, some games he's having eh?

A very impressive downhill leg, on a rather bumpy, testing course leaving Svindal with a comfortable lead. There was apparently some controversy about Innerhofer's time with the Italian team lodging an official protest, but I've heard no more about it - anyone know more?

Very exciting slalom, on the much warmer side of the town - the ruts in the piste by the time the "fast boys" got to the course certainly caused a number of upsets. In the end Ondrej Bank (who suffered the equivalent of the kiss of death by being my tip for a surprise medal) couldn't quite produce the goods and ended up 5th, just behind Benny Raich - superb slalom but a disappointing downhill - he just gave himself too much to recover. Peter Fill took a very well deserved bronze with a very steady performance but was pipped (actually more like a second) by his fellow Sud-Tiroler Innerhofer, who showed a remakably deft touch on the slalom skis for a supposed out and out speed merchant - great championships for him! Great runs by Axel Lund Svindal - well judged on both parts of this discipline, and a well deserved win; well done Axel!