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Austria's Benjamin Raich won the giant slalom at the World Cup finals in Are, Sweden, to keep his overall title chances alive.

The victory put Raich within two points of leader Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway in the standings.

Swiss Didier Cuche also remained in contention with third place in the race behind Raich and American Ted Ligety to win the giant slalom World Cup title.

Svindal, who finished the giant slalom in 19th place and so failed to score, has 1,009 points while Raich is on 1,007 and Cuche on 919.

The winner of the overall crystal globe will be decided by Saturday's slalom, the last individual men's race of the season.

Raich, the discipline's Olympic champion, will be a clear favourite in the slalom as neither Svindal nor Cuche are specialists.

"To find myself in a position to win the big globe after such an up and down season is unbelievable especially as the course was very hard today and the conditions extreme," he said.

Raich, who won the overall title in 2006 and was runner-up the last two seasons, clocked two minutes 18.95 seconds for victory in Friday's race.

It was the 31-year-old's fourth win of the season, the 34th of his career and the 14th in a giant slalom. Ligety finished 0.13" behind and Cuche was 0.71" adrift.

Cuche, 34, needed to finish in the top four to win the specialty's crystal globe and cap a season during which he also won the super-G world title in Val d'Isere.

"It's a great emotion not only to win a globe, but to win it in giant slalom which is the most difficult discipline," said the Swiss, who finished the morning run with only one pole after losing the other along the way.

"This is one of the greatest moments of my skiing career."

Reuters