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Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal held his nerve to master a treacherous slalom course and win the super-combined gold medal at the World Championships.

Svindal posted the fastest time in the downhill section and managed to reach the bottom of a slalom run in which many favourites stumbled to clock a combined winning time of two minutes 23 seconds.

France's Julien Lizeroux, in 22nd position after the downhill, thrilled the home fans with a remarkable comeback, clocking the best slalom time to win silver 0.90 seconds back.

Croatia's Natko Zrncic-Dim took the bronze, 1.58 seconds behind the winner, after a tricky slalom staged under floodlights with snow falling hard on this French Alps resort.

The 26-year-old Svindal, who won bronze in the super-G here last week, crowned a sparkling comeback after being seriously injured in a downhill crash at Beaver Creek in December 2007.

The Norwegian all-rounder stunned the skiing world by winning a downhill and a super-G on the same Beaver Creek piste a year after his accident but had not expected to do so well.

"I came here to progressively get back to my best level but I really wasn't thinking about winning a title," he said.

"It was tough because Lizeroux put a lot of pressure on me with a sensational slalom run."

American Bode Miller, who had narrowly avoided a crash on his way to clocking the second best time in the morning's downhill, straddled a gate in the slalom, living up to his reputation as an exciting but unreliable skier.

Other favourites such as France's Jean-Baptiste Grange suffered the same fate.

There was some consolation for the host nation with Lizeroux, who posted his first World Cup win in a slalom in Kitzbuehel last month, taking the silver.

"This beats Kitzbuehel," said an elated Lizeroux. "Winning a silver at world championships at home is something else. I had a lot of fun and I'm sure the fans had a lot of fun as well. It was a fight but it was great."

Znrcic-Dim completed the podium to give Croatia something to celebrate after overall World Cup leader Ivica Kostelic had to leave the championships to nurse a sore back.

There was further disappointment for Austria when Benjamin Raich skied out in the downhill, leaving the usually-dominant Alpine nation without a medal after three men's events.

Reuters