BORMIO, Italy, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Giovanni Franzoni lit up the Stelvio course with a lightning-fast downhill run to put Italy in sight of gold in the Olympic Alpine skiing men's team combined on Monday.
The 24-year-old, who took silver behind Switzerland's Franjo von Allmen in the downhill on Saturday, clocked 1:51.80 to put Italy's first team on top of the standings before the slalom leg that will be skied by his teammate Alex Vinatzer later.
Three of the four Swiss teams on the start list made up the next three places with Alexis Monney just 0.17 seconds off Franzoni's pace. Marco Odermatt, bidding to hit back after surprisingly failing to medal in the downhill, was third-fastest, 0.28 seconds slower.
With his slalom man being world champion Loic Meillard, Switzerland's first team will be favourite for gold when the slalom leg starts at 1300GMT. Monney will be relying on Daniel Yule whose slalom results this season have been mediocre.
Downhill champion Von Allmen, leading Switzerland's second team, looked set to top the standings but lost time in the closing section of the 3.2km track and could only post the fourth-quickest time, 0.42 seconds off. He is partnered by regular World Cup top-10 slalom racer Tanguy Nef.
Franzoni's time was one-hundredth of a second faster than his silver-medal run on Saturday and the Italians in the sunlit grandstand cheered loudly as he crossed the finishing line. The pressure will now be on the 26-year-old Vinatzer to convert it to gold.
He finished second in the Beaver Creek slalom this season but has struggled since and crashed out on three occasions.
France, who have a host of strong slalom racers, will still be hopeful of a medal after downhiller Nils Allegre went sixth fastest, less than a second slower than Franzoni. Allegre will hand over to Olympic slalom champion Clement Noel.
The best of the four Austrian pairings was Vincent Kriechmayr who was seventh fastest, 1.25 seconds back, and is partnered by slalom specialist Manuel Feller.
The new combined format replaces its previous incarnation in which the same skier completed a downhill and slalom. It was first used at the 2025 World Championships where Switzerland swept the podium.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Ed Osmond)
