Sports story by Gareth Bowman, Sun, 04 Dec 2005 15:12:00 GMT


BEAVER CREEK, Colorado - American World Cup champion Bode Miller cruised to his first victory in the men's season in a giant slalom here on Saturday.

Miller overcame stiff competition from fellow American Daron Rahlves, who was leading downhill on Friday. Miller clocked two minutes 34.56 seconds to narrowly beat his mate Rahlves by 0.49 down the Birds of Prey piste. Kalle Palander of Finland was placed third. The Finn was on level terms with Miller in the first leg.

Miller has had a quite start to the season, but is picking up pace keeping the Winter Olympics in Turin slated for February in mind. And even though he stumbled in the second run, he was able to make up beautifully to emerge at the top of the heap.

Commenting on the prevailing conditions that got worse amid steady snowfall, Miller said, "I was out of the course a couple of times and was very close to getting out of the course a couple more times. With the kind of fatigue I was dealing with, that's the kind of skiing I love to do.

Sometimes you don't win when you do that but that was really a winning run for me." He added that his form and fitness were in fine fettle, but his knee was a little sore from yesterday's stumble.

Even Palander had lost some time because of a stumble while he attempted to keep his hip balance, "It's always difficult to beat the U.S. guys here. Especially today, when they had three of the top four skiers. It was nice to be the first European guy anyway," he said. Palander was the 1999 World Champion.

Bill Marolt, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association was leased with the overall 1-2 showing by the American team and said that this was an ideal preparation for the Turin games.

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