The Norwegian picked up a sixth win of the season in the Swiss resort and has climbed above Austria's Marcel Hirscher, the winner of the last four World Cup titles, to take first place.

Hirscher, the 26-year-old Sochi 2014 silver medallist, specialises in slalom, giant slalom and Super-G events and was not named on today's start-list. 

Thirty-three-year-old Vancouver 2010 Super-G champion Svindal claimed a winning time of 1 min 48.79 sec with Austrian Hannes Reichelt coming second 0.19 sec back.

Klaus Kroell, another Austrian, was third but was 1.52 adrift on a day when challenging weather conditions made things tricky for organisers.

In the morning, heavy snow was falling and the decision was made to lower the start, and this was followed by a fog delay after 20 skiers had completed their run.

Svindal, who was second in yesterday's Alpine Combined World Cup in Wengen, was forced to ski through the fog as it set in but it had little impact on his descent. 

"It was hard today, but I just focused on finding the best line and skiing a clean run," he said.

Hirscher is now 15 points behind Svindal in the overall rankings, with the leader boasting a tally of 816.

Norway's slalom specialist Henrik Kristoffersen is third overall but is a long way adrift on 571 points.

A slalom World Cup race will take place in Wengen tomorrow.