Home skier Manuel Feller of Austria was fastest on the first run of the Kirchenkar slalom in the Alpine skiing World Cup opening men's race on Saturday.

On crisp, compact snow with the mercury below -9C Feller swooped down from the 2475m altitude starting gate at Gurgl taking 53.22sec to swivel down the tightly-gated run with French slalom specialist Clement Noel at 0.94sec in second.

Olympic champion Noel will need a shift in fortune to overtake the former world champion Feller in the afternoon second run.

A previous meeting at Solden was called off last week and the first of two scheduled women's downhill races at Zermatt was shelved earlier Saturday due to poor weather.

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