Austrian Marcel Hirscher's bid to wrap up the overall World Cup title in Saturday's giant slalom was stymied by his only rival, Norway's Kjetil Jansrud, and the duo's battle for supremacy will now go down to the wire on Sunday.
Hirscher, who has already won the World Cup giant slalom title with five individual victories, edged closer to a record fourth consecutive overall crystal globe by finishing fourth in a race won by Norwegian Henrik Kristoffersen.
The 50 points he bagged after two descents of the 1.3km-long Roc de Fer course took the Austrian out to 1,348pts, 60pts ahead of Jansrud, with everything now riding on Sunday's slalom at the season-ending World Cup finals.
Jansrud, who has already bagged this season's downhill and super-G crystal globes, is not a technical specialist.
With a previous best giant slalom finish this season of 14th, Jansrud's last podium in the discipline was back in December 2011 and he didn't look like threatening on Saturday, finishing 2.10sec off the pace in 21st position in the first leg.
But he produced a much better second leg - the second fastest of the racers, to finish 11th, netting 24pts to take him to 1,288pts in the overall standings.
However, the Norwegian has a mountain to climb if he is to better Hirscher on Sunday, his best slalom performance a fourth place way back in December 2005.
Kristoffersen timed an aggregate of 2min 17.36sec over the two legs, 0.79sec ahead of Germany's Fritz Dopfer, with France's Thomas Fanara rounding out the podium in third at 0.97sec.
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